


Milestones

by NuMo



Series: The Road Ahead [4]
Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: AU, Established Relationship, F/F, Post-Canon, Post-Endgame, Section 31
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-15
Updated: 2012-11-15
Packaged: 2017-11-18 17:42:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 38,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/563693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NuMo/pseuds/NuMo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We’ll have birthday parties with chocolate and fizzy powder and gummy bears till <i>everyone</i> gets sick. We’ll teach our children biking, and knitting, and seeing hunters in stationary stars. We’ll argue with them over homework and boyfriends (or girlfriends) and staying up late, we’ll love our children silly and love our children sane, we’ll love each other senseless, and we’ll be alright.</p><hr/><p>Part Four of the <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/series/23850">"The Road Ahead"</a> Series. I strongly suggest you read the other three first. </p><p>I don't own Star Trek nor anything connected with it, but I do own my own characters. I'm not making any profit, although I hope to reap some feedback.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Concern

_“He used often to say there was only one Road; that it was like a great river: its springs were at every doorstep, and every path was its tributary. ‘It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,’ he used to say. ‘You step onto the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.’”_

* * *

So many things to worry about. Granted, objectively, Kathryn had more concerns, more urgent ones, too, when they were still in the Delta Quadrant. But everything seems to have doubled, now that there’s a baby in the equation. 

That Section 31 business had really hit close to home. And how can Kathryn be certain that their home is safe if people insist that she shouldn’t concern herself with ship’s business while on maternity leave? When this ship _is_ home? 

So many worries, and somehow, each time one is assuaged, another two raise their heads – so Ayala has moved to Bloomington, and he’s a fine and capable man. But he’s got family, too, doesn’t he? What if they’re threatened? And Phoebe – Kathryn glares at the memory of her sister flatly refusing security because ‘there is no crime on Betazed, Kathryn’. _I only hope that giving her Tuvok’s anonymized report on Suder will open those stubborn eyes._

Kathryn presses the door chime to _Voyager’s_ best guest quarters. “Come in,” a familiar voice calls out, and Kathryn steps through the readily opening doors. “Kathryn, love – it’s good to see you!” Gretchen hugs her, then pushes her away to arm’s length. “What’s wrong?”

“Can’t keep anything from you, can I,” Kathryn mumbles, following her mother to the sofa.

“Well, it’s the middle of the night, you are at your mother’s doorstep, and you’re patently nowhere near sleep. Give me some credit here, will you?” Kathryn levels a look at her, and Gretchen sighs, then chuckles softly. “There are times when it’s uncanny how much you remind me of your father, daughter mine. And this,” her hands describe a wide circle, “is so close it’s almost a déjà-vu. He was scared stiff when you were born.” Her eyes grow gentle, distant. “Scared stiff,” she repeats. “Great Edward Janeway, with all his pips and medals and commendations, all his contacts and friends and people who owed him favors. When I told him I was pregnant, he _blanched_. Never thought I’d see the day.”

“I can relate to how he felt,” Kathryn admits. 

“Of course you can. Who doesn’t want the world to be a safe place for their children?”

Kathryn’s head comes up from the tea table flower arrangement she’s been studying, eyes pulled by the catch in her mother’s voice. Of course. _I never realized…_ “And then the world takes your husband and strands your daughter half a galaxy away.” 

Gretchen smiles at her, though. “Oh, but you came back, didn’t you? Life takes, life gives. And I think in my case the balance is firmly on the plus side.” She pauses with a deep breath, then takes Kathryn’s hand firmly in hers. “Kathryn, do stop being so demanding of yourself – you’ve been through such a lot. It’s only a year, after all, that you’re back from the Delta Quadrant, and what a year it’s been. A court martial, a promotion. A whirlwind marriage, an equally sudden pregnancy, a depressed wife. A conspiracy to steal your ship and kill you all, for heaven’s sake. And for a bit of peace and quiet – three blessed days in Sweden, with security officers along.” 

That last sentence is delivered so dead-pan that Kathryn can’t help but smile. “If you put it that way…” 

“I do.” With a last squeeze, Gretchen lets go and cocks her head. “So you’re scared. Of what exactly?” 

“I…” Kathryn swallows. “I constantly feel as if I haven’t thought of everything. It drives me mad to imagine anything happening to you, or Lea, or Marie, because I forgot to think of something.” And that, of course, is the reason for her headlong dive into security discussions with ch’Vlossen and Seven and Chakotay and… everyone she could think of, really. Making things safe for her loved ones. Nothing else.

“You can’t make the world safe for an infant, Kathryn.” 

“I can try, can’t I!” Kathryn fires back, incensed by her mother’s calmness. _I need to. I_ need _to make it safe. How can she be so… relaxed about it?_

“And if you fail in bettering Starfleet, the Federation and the universe in general, you fail your daughter?” And that question is accompanied by the most piercing gaze Kathryn has ever felt subjected to.

Kathryn stares back at Gretchen, openmouthed and at a loss for words. 

Again, Gretchen laughs and shakes her head. Again, Kathryn feels her anger rise. “I swear, Kathryn, from the moment he heard about your arrival, Edward never once stopped worrying. And I do agree that it’s part of a parent’s task to provide safety for their children. But you can’t control everything, love; it’s pointless to even try. You’ll wear yourself out before the world is how you want it.”

“I know that,” Kathryn grates from between gritted teeth. 

Her mother keeps up her scrutiny, then nods, apparently satisfied by what she sees in Kathryn’s face. A smile flickers across her features, and she tilts her head, eyes still sharp, but in another way. “So that’s not really what has you so upset, is it.”

“How…” Kathryn can’t bring herself to complete the question. _How does she know?_

Again, Gretchen’s gaze turns back to a different place, a different time. “You know, Julia Paris had a hard time of it when Tom was born. It wasn’t a case of postpartum depression, far from it – but it wasn’t the motherly bliss people expect to happen when a woman gives birth, either.” She shakes her head again. “Some mothers take to their child instantly. Some need a few days to adjust, even weeks. Depressed is just one in a multitude of possibilities of how a new mother can feel. You’d think that in billions of years of procreating people would have learned that by now.”

“Mom, I…” Again, how? _How can I tell my mother – how could I tell anyone? – that the word ‘family’ evokes memories of the reunion party we just had, of Mom and Phoebe and brownies and Bloomington, of laughing with Chakotay on_ Voyager’s _bridge? And not the image of a home, a wife, a daughter?_

“Give yourself time, Kathryn,” Gretchen’s voice cuts through those thoughts. “I’m positive Lea will be a wonderful, loveable, exhausting and delightful kid. Take your time to get to know her. Take your time to get to know your wife, and yourself, in the context of family. It’s a good thing Marie is like she is – I don’t think she would file a divorce to get you to listen.” Kathryn’s head snaps up incredulously. “Julia did, back then,” Gretchen nods affirmation. “It was tough for both of them. Owen had no idea how to cope, Julia couldn’t find the words to tell him what was going on… and so things turned ever downwards, until Julia saw no other way out. At least it got both of them to sit down and talk about it, and then the solicitor was wise enough to point them to a counselor.” A smile flashes across Gretchen’s face. “When she told me about it, Julia said that that divorce letter actually saved their marriage.”

A slow exhale helps Kathryn find words. “I had no idea…”

“Not many people do,” Gretchen replies. “I don’t think even Tom knows. Owen took it very much to heart; maybe too much so. I know for a fact that he was quite… apprehensive. Unsure of how to treat his son – oh, he loved Tom, there’s no doubt of that. And he never blamed him, either, but Owen Paris was quite thrown off course by that episode, and I remember thinking that in his determination to do right by his boy, he overshot the mark. Not that Tom was an easy boy to do right by,” she adds wryly. “Took me a while to reconcile the boy I knew with the man who returned from the Delta Quadrant; I daresay it took his parents a little longer.” Then, after a pause, and in a much softer voice, “You did well by him, Kathryn.”

“ _He_ did most of that,” Kathryn wards off the undeserved praise. “I just gave him his chance, that’s all.”

“Exactly.” Gretchen smiles as if she’s just made an indisputable point. Her eyes turn indulgent when Kathryn refuses to acknowledge it. “Oh, my Katie. Confusion doesn’t make you a bad mother. But do stop pushing and punishing yourself. No one deserves that, not you, not your child, not your wife. Talk to Marie; I’m sure you’ll find your way. I’ll listen with openness – wasn’t that part of her wedding vows?”

Kathryn nods, again struck speechless by the memory. Simple words, brought forth sincerely, artlessly, from a completely exposed heart.

“I thought so,” Gretchen continues. “So honor her promise, will you? Make it your own; only trust begets trust. From what I’ve seen between the two of you, I don’t think Marie would be mad if you told her; on the contrary, I reckon she’d be angry if you didn’t.”

 _She’s right._ “True,” Kathryn nods, suppressing a sudden yawn. “I think she suspects something already, in any case.”

Gretchen laughs out loud, one silver bell note. “She does know you well, doesn’t she. All the more reason to speak to her soon, I’d say.” Gretchen takes a breath and sits up straighter. “Now, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Hm?” 

“If you’re awake enough to listen,” her mother smirks teasingly. “This Section 31 business-”

“Right – are Ayala and his family settling in alright?”

“Oh, I believe they are; his sons are delightful, you know. And I thank you for asking him to make the move. But that’s not what I meant.”

“Well, then what did you mean?” A second yawn assaults Kathryn in earnest. It is far past midnight, after all. 

“Have you ever thought of joining them?”

“Ayala and his family?”

Gretchen laughs again. “The Section, sleepyhead.” 

It takes Kathryn a while to process it. Then, “What?! You can’t be serious!” Wide awake in an instant, she stares at her mother, mouth hanging open once again.

“Why not? Fight them from the inside, or change them for the better. Who if not you?”

“I can’t. Won’t! Mom, how can you even think-”

Her mother raises her hands in capitulation. “Alright, alright, forget I said anything. It was just an idea, anyway.”

“I’ll forget it alright,” Kathryn snorts. “Not one of your best ideas, Mom. I think I’ll stick with talking to Marie, if you don’t mind.”

“By all means, my dear. By all means.”


	2. Surprised (June 2379)

“What?!” I stare at Althea as if she’d just sprouted a third eye. I had wondered why she’d sought me out in the aft lounge. She knows I come here to think, sometimes; to have a bit of quiet, that being a rare commodity in a household with an infant of three weeks. And I can see where a bit of quiet is needed to talk about something like this, too, but… seriously?! “They want me to _join_ them? Are they _kidding!?_ No, wait, I’ve got it. They’re _all_ insane, not just Voyskunsky.”

Althea rolls her eyes at me. “Think about it for a second, will you?” She looks as if shaking some sense into me seems a very tempting option, so I acquiesce. “They’re fractured. There’s at least one faction that was all in favor of taking _Voyager_ and declaring her sadly lost with all hands, even if they might not have condoned Voyskunsky’s vendetta. There are those who aren’t really satisfied with all the acquittals of _Voyager’s_ crew, so they tried to mete out their idea of justice. And there’s at least one other faction, one that is as sickened by what happened as we are. 

“The agent who contacted me claims he belongs to the latter, and that he and his gang want to clean up behind the scenes. He insists that while Section 31 might sometimes be judge, jury and executioner in one, the ground rule for what they do is always the Federation’s best interests,” Althea grimaces, “or at least that’s where he want to take things again. From the feel of him, he was truthful enough about that. And even if he managed to deceive me somehow, who’s to say we couldn’t do that?”

“An inside job, eh?” 

“Oh, the wit. The Cynics would offer you a place in their gymnasion for sure.” 

Althea’s hands twitch, I’m sure of it. _Placate her, so._ “What’s their offer?”

“I thought that would be obvious. The safety of your family in return for… services.”

“I won’t be spying on Kathryn.” My refusal is adamant. It’s bad enough that Kathryn was so shaken after the Section 31 business, and then, again, after Lea’s birth. I won’t add this too all of that. I won’t.

“Of course you won’t!” Again, Althea rolls her eyes, and I lower mine demurely. _Appeasement, Janeway, remember. Appeasement._ “It would be quite idiotic to assign tasks so close to home, now wouldn’t it. And they know you better than that; the psychological profile he cited as proof of his claims, was spot-on on that account.”

“Profile.”

“They have the databanks,” Althea says with pained patience. “They have the logs. They have the testimonies. Why do you think they want you? Your performance down there was compelling, I’d say.” She grins toothily. “And they also know it would be a suicide mission to ask Kathryn herself.”

“They got that right, at least,” I mumble. I’ve always thought that this Section sounded like something Hollywood authors would think up. Oh, I know secret services. I did catch a glimpse of the rear end of the Cold War, so to speak, even if I was only ten when the Wall fell. It didn’t, in this universe, by the way – weird, somehow. I remember my parents crying in front of a TV set. I remember two-stroke engines painting the air blue when I went to school next day. I remember seeing, for the first time in my short life, empty shelves in department stores. To this day, the words “Wir sind das Volk” make me tremble and tear up; no matter how Kathryn calls me indomitable – _they_ were, much more than I. And none of this happened here. Anyway, back to topic. Secret services. Behind-the-scenes string-pulling. 

Politics.

I try to contain my contempt. I bet Brooks will go free. I wonder how many others will.

“Their offer,” Althea goes on through my musings, “is that you’ll be trained during your academy semesters, on the side. You _were_ thinking about taking tactical courses anyway, weren’t you?” I nod, and she spreads her arms. “Well, there you have it, then. Perfect. Afterwards, you’ll probably be asked to convey messages to agents on the planets you’ll be visiting or something along those lines, I’d say. Small jobs like that. Honestly I think they just want to keep you close at hand. Me too, probably.”

I look at her. Long. Hard. Thinking. “Bullshit.”

“Got that right, at least,” she grins again, throwing my words back at me. “I’d say he has high hopes for you, in terms of cleaning up. I can see where he would, too – got a good moral compass on you, don’t you, and just that bit of ruthlessness they need. You enjoyed scaring the shit out of Voyskunsky down there.” God, she’s a menace. From her voice to her words to that goddamn glint in her eyes, she’s all dare, defying me to call her a liar, telepath, empath that she is. 

“I would have hurt her, for what she did,” I reply. True enough. “I did hurt her. I didn’t like it. It was necessary and I did it. Ruthlessness is a tool, not part of who I am.”

Althea gives me what can only be called an old-fashioned look. “Try again.”

“Okay, so I went berserk when I heard that gasp of Kathryn’s. When I had Voyskunsky against that console, though… when she asked if I’d kill her if she didn’t release Kathryn, I… couldn’t. Came back to my senses, if you will.” I shrug. “I was careful not to let her see – let her wet her pants a little longer, right? So I took that half-baked plan of Riker’s and improvised a little more on it, since I had her there anyway and stood a good chance of reaching our goal this way.”

“Better,” Althea nods her approval of my answer. “And that’s what they want, I daresay. Enough acting capability to appear mad and ruthless and scare people shitless. Enough sense to know when to stop. Enough rootedness in your convictions to know where to stop. Enough flexibility to think about their offer.”

Again, I think hard about what she’s saying, and not only her words. “How do you know all this, anyway?”

“Huh.” Althea scoffs, then her mobile features break into one of the most dangerous grins I’ve ever seen. Worse than Riker’s, although… maybe she’s channeling him. She’s known him for years, after all. “I melded with Voyskunsky’s computer, down on that planet. For my own bit of safeguard, for my own family, right?”

God, yes. The reunion of Althea and Deanna had been… profound. I’d been in sickbay, hovering around Kathryn’s sleeping form on the bed, when _Voyager’s_ first officer had come in to hurl herself at her wife, nearly necessitating another go of the Doctor’s osteo-regenerator. I swear they’d embraced for ten minutes or longer, arms so tightly around each other that the whiteness of their knuckles had shone out across the room. 

“Exactly,” Althea nods again, getting the gist of my thoughts. “And I skimmed a whole lot more off the Lethean, and off the guy who contacted me.” I swallow harshly. I don’t feel too kindly disposed towards telepathy, at the moment. “And that’s another thing,” Althea goes on, a propos of that, sounding annoyingly unperturbed. “I’d be coaching you in shielding yourself against that sort of attack. A, an agent need to be, and B, I think you’d like to be able to, right?”

“Which is why you’d teach me anyway, if I asked.”

“Yes, but I can’t take on Section 31 alone.” So _she’s_ really, seriously thinking about this? “They want you,” Althea goes on, “they want me, and we can move things once we’re in there. We can do this, Marie. Even if the one who contacted me was lying about his motives, which, as I said, I don’t think he was.”

I’m getting tired of that ‘he’. “Anyone I know?”

“Nope,” she shrugs. “No one from _Voyager_ , either. Said his name was Julian, and he wasn’t lying about that. He wasn’t lying at all, in fact.”

And that’s all I get, not that I’d thought I’d get more. I stretch and look around the aft lounge, my thoughts racing. “Althea, I… I have to think about this.”

“Do.”

“And I have to talk to Kathryn, see what she-”

Althea interrupts me. “You’re kidding, right?” 

“ _You’re_ kidding.” I stare at her, then laugh out loud. It’s nice to surprise a telepath, I reckon. “Althea. You don’t honestly think, after all we’ve been through, that I would keep something like this from her, do you?”

She sighs. “I guess not. And I guess it’s no bloody use to tell you that _he_ said not to talk to her on any account.”

My turn for a wolfish grin. “Seems like that profile of theirs isn’t quite that comprehensive, if they think I’d listen.” 

“Just do me a favor,” Althea replies, with a heartfelt grimace. 

I can guess where she’s going, and I don’t like it. “Keep you out of it?” 

She nods. “Him, too.”

“Shit, Althea, I can’t promise you that.” Her eyes flare, but I meet them. “Of course I can’t,” I insist. “You know Kathryn is anything but slow. If she figures it out and asks me outright – do you honestly think I’d lie to her, straight-faced, after all this?” It’s my eyes that burn into hers, now. “I won’t name names if I can help it, but that’s all I can give you.”

She nods, grudgingly. “Thought so.”

I smirk at her, lopsidedly. “I thought you might.” Then I turn serious. “One favor begets another, though, right?”

She leans back, perfectly aware of where I’m going, I’m sure of that. Confirmation quickly follows. “Privacy, huh?”

“Yes,” I nod. “Perfect, complete and utter privacy, when I talk to Kathryn about it.” Something occurs to me. “ _Voyager’s_ systems are still safe, are they?”

Althea rolls her eyes. “Course they are. Trust me on this.”

“You know, for some reason I do,” I sigh. “I don’t quite know why, but I do.” Well, I tell a lie – I do know. I trust her because I want to. I need to. And I hope to hell that trust will turn out to have been earned, as Deanna so eloquently put it, right here, not that long ago. Deanna! She’s all integrity. She wouldn’t live with someone who’s not trustworthy, would she?

Althea looks at me, something unreadable in her eyes. “I used to fly,” she says, a propos of nothing. “I used to fly, with seagulls, or hawks, or owls, before I ever touched a human mind. It was exhilarating to hunt with an owl of a night, or nose-dive with a hawk, but I always liked the seagulls best. Nothing beats the view of the sea from high up.” Her eyes close, and there’s an expression of utter longing on her face. “I can’t do that anymore since I’m in human form, but the memories stay with me, and sometimes I dream of flying.”

“So do I,” I say, with a dry throat. I heard those cries, after all. So she can Borrow, can she? I’d long for that, too, in her place. My dreams of flying have been different, though – I never rode with a bird. I just spread my arms and… jumped off a balcony, a goodbye letter (if you can call it that) wedged underneath my phone on the table behind me. Es tut mir leid. The most difficult words, in any language.

I shiver violently at the unbidden memory. 

Althea reaches out a hand, eyes still shut, and I take it and find myself under a Mediterranean sun, wheeling and cavorting and gliding, and crying with the fierce joy of it. Part of me wants to jerk away from what is patently not my memory, but this is not invasion. Althea’s hand is slack in mine, and the feel of her mind is… this is an offer, nothing more, nothing less. To hang up on the wall next to my memory.

Friendship and trust. We circle and swoop, the currents visible, the air our ally. When I’m aware of my surroundings again, Althea’s eyes are locked onto mine. “I need to trust you too, Marie, if we should do this together. I don’t trust a lot of people, mostly because a lot of people lie to themselves such a lot. You do, too, but at least not that often, _and_ you’re prepared to listen and face the truth.”

I raise my eyebrows. I lie to myself, huh? Well. I think I can see how a telepath would mean that. “Thanks. I guess.”

She flashes a grin at me. “Go see her. I don’t know how I ever thought you wouldn’t.” 

~~~

“Kathryn, are you awake?” By the light of stars at warp, I watch my wife roll over and stretch, slowly, languidly. Irritably. She’s been asleep, damnit, really, truly, deeply asleep. Even more so than quietness, sleep is getting rare and cherished, and here I go waking her. But this brooks no delay, right? “I’m sorry, love, but I need to talk to you.”

_That_ gets her eyes open. “What’s wrong?” And, almost as if in afterthought, “Computer, lights, twenty percent.” Dim though it is, the light makes her wince, and that in turn adds to the heft of regret on my back.

“Nothing,” I try to reassure her, but I can’t keep my trepidation out of my voice. In a blink, she’s sitting, eyes alert, back straight, full thrusters. “I’ve been… someone contacted me. Just now. And I think we should talk about this.”

“Contacted you?” Her eyes narrow, then widen. “Section 31?” Grow hard, at my nod. “Who? Did they threaten you? Try to blackmail you?” 

Her second and third question give me license to gloss over the first, and I use it. “None of the sort, Kathryn.” They also wake a sickening suspicion. “Did they try that with you?”

Kathryn sags a little. “No. But I’ve always thought it would be a consistent step.” She hides a yawn behind one hand and rubs her eyes with the back of the other. “Made me instate security measures for everyone I could think of, to be honest, Marie.”

My eyebrows rise. I swallow. Sensible, yes, certainly, but… God. What have we gotten into? “How about us?” I manage, and watch her eyes darken further. Before she can answer, I go on, “and that’s what they dangled in front of me, see?” I reach out for her and she crosses the bed and settles sideways between my legs, her arms light on my waist while I lean against the bulkhead, running my hands across her form, more compact now, no longer so clumsy, still beautiful. 

Kathryn is returning to her pre-pregnancy litheness enviably quickly, but then she’d been _determined_ , enough so to find time for a somewhat regular work-out. And when I’d commented, one day, on her dreamy look upon coming back from the holodeck, she’d laughed at me, then asked me if I didn’t realize that rowing will do just that. Stunned that she’d choose my sport, I had been quick to concede (once I found my tongue) that yes, I did know about the rowing flow. 

I have no doubt that Kathryn cleared it with the Doctor or Althea as a suitable postpartum activity. I have no doubt that, for medicinal reasons alone, neither of our two doctors would have seen fit to dissuade my wife from her plans. After all, far more than, say, Velocity or tennis, rowing is patently not a sport of quick, unpredictable movements, is it? But I daresay the… psychological benefits might equal or even outweigh the physical ones. The smoothly rolling motion, the gurgle of the waves, the surge of the boat once you’re in rhythm; all of that can be just as much meditation as sitting cross-legged in front of a candle would be. Add the fact that you can program a holographic river to run just the way your boat does, eliminating the need to look over your shoulder and make course changes, and you can reach that state of immersion within ten minutes, sometimes less.

Soothing. Centering. 

Kathryn had needed it. Even though she is, with time and patience, finding her way into the idea of us being a family, it hadn’t been easy to convince Admiral Janeway to go on maternity leave. Deanna had really shone last week, at least to my eyes, when she’d blazed into our quarters and snatched the PADD out of Kathryn’s hands, telling her in no uncertain terms to quit doing her replacement’s job. They’d stared at each other over the innocent little rectangle until I’d burst out laughing, then they’d both glared at me, and _then_ they’d talked for an hour or so, finally coming up with a solution that kept Kathryn in the loop (because she’d go spare otherwise) while at the same time freeing her mind for family business. It has worked, so far, after a fashion.

But, back to the reason why I woke her. “I immediately asked Althea, of course, and she assured me that _Voyager’s_ systems haven’t been compromised,” I tell the crown of Kathryn’s head, and she sighs. “I have no idea how anyone got through, but… there it is. An offer, not blackmail.”

“An offer of what?”

I choose another angle. “Apparently, there are groups within this Section,” I begin, dangling the words out for her to pick up. 

“That’s what I heard, too,” she says after a while, and I perk up. So she…? “Marie, I… everything about this is disturbing,” Kathryn goes on, oblivious to my frown, “from the mere suspicion that there could be such an organization to the realization that not only there is a Section 31, but they’re obviously unable to keep their people in check. So imagine my reaction when I was asked to a HQ conference room and found myself faced by people who dared to suggest that while of course, and in the Federation’s best interests, some people’s heads would roll, would I kindly drop the issue after that.”

I whistle softly, then chuckle into Kathryn’s head. After a moment, she joins me with a snort that speaks more of bitterness than of amusement. “Any of them still alive?” I try to lighten the mood.

It works. “Must have spoken to my orchids,” she growls, “or maybe the replicator has given up its secret at long last.”

“It might have. That thing holds a grudge.” Then I sober up again. “What happened in there?”

“I was… dissuaded.” She forces the words out, and I do remember a day when she’d come home in a very bleak mood. But since we, neither of us, are vociferous ‘what I did at work today’ talkers, I’d concentrated on turning her thoughts to lighter things instead of asking after the darkness in her eyes.

“So Brooks will go free?” I voice one of my suspicions.

“Among others,” Kathryn sighs. “Brooks wasn’t part of the conspiracy to get _Voyager_ , from what I gathered, and the people around that table reassured me she’d be reprimanded for her interest in Seven and Icheb. My guess is that she’s too prominent. Or too important, or both. I sincerely hope they don’t have many more admirals in their ranks, although part of me doubts it.”

I can’t help it – the opening is there; who knows how many will come along? “I might have a chance to find that out.” 

After a breathless moment, Kathryn jerks away from me, eyes narrow again, disbelieving. “What are you…” She laughs, suddenly, a dark sound without any humor. “I should have known. Ever since that conference,” she spits the word; it does lend itself to that, “I’ve waited for them to contact me with an offer to join them. Instead they…” She shakes her head. “Idiots,” she says, with feeling.

“I am tempted, you know.”

Again, her head snaps up sharply, this time to meet my eyes. “What?!”

“Tempted, but not decided. This is what I wanted to talk to you about, you see.” My eyes return her intenseness; she has to understand where I stand. “Kathryn, this is far too big to decide on my own. But this is also far, far too big to decide on gut feeling alone. So I’m asking you to please look at the pros and cons with me. I want this to be our decision, not mine, not yours, because we’ll have to live with it for a long time.”

She struggles with that, I can see it. This is not her usual decision-making process; she’s still far too much the captain, and probably always will be. And that’s precisely why I hold her gaze. And her eventual nod is precisely why I love her. “Alright,” she says. “Let’s give it a try.”

I blow out a long, long breath. “Thank you,” rides on it, heartfelt, sincere. It wins me a fleeting, eye-rolling smile that tells me, precisely, how difficult her acquiescence has been. “Someone has, apparently, gotten wind of the part I played,” I go on, trying to fit my thoughts into words that speak not too clearly of who that ‘someone’ is. “And, apparently, they liked my performance. Enough so that they want me on their team, at any rate. A team that wants to ensure that Section 31 does indeed work for the Federation’s best interest, from what they said. The way I see it, being inside could be a big chance to know what’s going on, even if it should turn out there’s not much cleaning up I could do.”

“Do you even know what you’re talking about, Marie?” Kathryn moves away from me, gets up, starts pacing – three steps up, three steps down. “One, these people are dangerous. Two, they violate everything I hold dear, from democratic procedures to plain and simple truth. Three, they seem to have carte blanche in what they do. If you were to cross the wrong people, you might end up dead!” She looks at me as if the very thought made her sick. Well. I suppose it- “This is too risky, Marie,” she cuts through my thought.

And just whose decision is that? Surely ours rather than hers, yes? “Would it be less risky to stay out of the game?” I ask, my voice carefully neutral. “Think about what it would mean to live that way. We’d always be looking over our shoulders, continually at the mercy of security measures. Not on the run, but certainly not at ease, either. We did cross some people already, and we don’t really know how far-reaching their network is. With a foothold inside, we might be safer.” I sigh, relaxing my shoulders a little – I’m not confronting her. I’m not. “I’m not sure, you see. This sounds like a movie plot, a good, old-fashioned spy novel, certainly not like something that is really happening to us. But it nearly got our daughter killed, and you.”

“You, too, Marie,” Kathryn adds with a sigh of her own. “So what’s the appeal? Why do you feel it’s tempting to join people who’ve shot at you?”

She’s generalizing; muddying the waters with it, and she knows it. Still, her question deserves an answer. “They talked about this family’s security, in exchange for my services. That’s a pretty big appeal. And…” Far more difficult, to tell her about the other reason. “Kathryn, I said before that I was much more of a politician than a white knight, right?” I don’t even wait for her nod before I go on. “And yet… if you have an organization that acts as judge, jury and executioner rolled into one – whom would you like in charge? Someone like Voyskunsky? Someone ruthless enough to sign over a few sparsely inhabited planets as if they were so many gaming pieces? Or someone whose morals you could trust?”

“Jumping right in, aren’t you,” she smirks down at me. “In charge? You wouldn’t be in charge, Marie. This is one group, and their aim, from what you’re telling me, does seem to fly into quite a few faces, even of their own partners. Who’s to say they’re going to succeed in what they plan to do?” 

“Who’s to say they won’t, if they have good people in their ranks?” And that’s it, really. I can live with the idea of a behind-the-scenes organization. That’s politics, after all. And the idea of getting that organization to adhere to the right kind of values… yes, I do think I could do that. With Althea around? Alright, so her values are grounded in Ancient Greece, but then, so are not a few of mine, when you get right down to it. And Althea can tell if someone’s lying, or trustworthy, or planning an attack, and that’s an ability I want on my side. 

“Marie…” Kathryn shakes her head and starts pacing again. “Sometimes I think things were easier out there in the Delta Quadrant, you know.” She runs a hand down the side of her face, then cups her neck with it.

“Of course they were,” I agree easily, and she turns to look at me, her face so baffled it’s almost funny. “Come on, Kathryn – you were the one setting the standards for what ‘Starfleet values’ meant. And they were good standards, most times.”

She grimaces at the last two words. “And that’s exactly it, isn’t it. I called a few shots that were way off the mark. Allying with the Borg – the _Equinox_ , for heaven’s sake! I…” her hand drops. She drops, to the bed, looking very small all of a sudden. Not something you see very often – Admiral Kathryn Janeway usually manages to radiate her presence far further than her skin. “I nearly lost myself out there, a couple of times. I nearly lost…” her hand clenches around the sheets. 

I’d known what she’s talking about, even before she’d said ‘Borg’ or _‘Equinox’_. “You nearly lost your friend,” I say softly.

“Chakotay was so furious, for so long. So distant.” Kathryn shudders, even now. “And whenever I think of that incident, I can’t help but remember talking to Tuvok, right at the start of our journey. He’d chosen to do something he knew was wrong; chosen to acquire technology that would have halved our journey in one stroke, but at the cost of violating another society’s laws. He’d seen my dilemma – I’d been horribly tempted myself, but I couldn’t have done it, any less than I could have had stood by while the Kazon took the Caretaker’s array. So Tuvok had chosen to make the exchange my stead, freeing me from the conflict while still allowing us to use the technology. Or so he’d argued, with his usual logic.” The last word is bitter, as is Kathryn’s laugh. 

“Not realizing that, while his action might put the blame at his feet, it didn’t free you from your responsibility.” 

“Worse,” she flares. “It put doubt on our friendship, on his integrity as my counsel, my sounding board. I… he… he stood there, calm as a…” she swallows a few words, searches for others, ends, “ _Vulcan_ , and tells me he felt logically legitimated to violate…” she breaks off again. More than seven years past, and I can feel the ground shift beneath her as clearly as she must have had, that day. Her knuckles are white around that sheet by now, as if by holding on to it the ground might stop its shaking. “Sometimes it was so hard to cling to my convictions, Marie, and there were times when I…” her swallow is harsh, and her next words barely more than a whisper, infinitely dearly bought, “…when I lost them. That dance is goddamn dangerous, don’t you see?”

“But it’s not a dance you dance alone,” is my reply. “You had two partners out there, and sometimes that wasn’t enough, I gather?” 

She ponders my words for a while, then nods. “You could say that.” Her hand releases the tortured fabric, smoothens it absentmindedly. 

“Well, I have you,” I say simply, and for a moment, she looks about to laugh. Then her eyes meet mine and her mouth closes again, at the easy, clear faith she sees in them. “And I am not you,” I go on, even more gently. It’s not an accusation, after all. “I make decisions in other ways than you do. Not better,” I raise my hands appeasingly, “nor worse, just different. And my decisions won’t have the reach yours did, not by far. And I won’t be on my own as you were; there are more dancing partners out there, a whole web of them.” My daughter, for starters. Need help flying straight? Take a look at your baby’s eyes. Easy. “That doesn’t diminish the danger to myself, I know, but the pressure is a whole lot different.” 

“You really think you can pull that off, don’t you?” she whispers. 

“If they want to do what I think they do – if they want to do it the way I think they do…” I’d have to know more about that, certainly. But, “yes,” I nod, “I think I could do it without losing my integrity.”

“And that’s what you’re going to explain to Lea?” 

Whoa. I hadn’t realized how much this must be unsettling Kathryn, if it brings her to low blows like this. Still – I don’t need to follow down there. Certainly not in kind. On the other hand, the direction of her question is valid enough. “Two sets of rules?” I ask, to make sure I’ve understood her. When Kathryn nods stiffly, it’s my turn to shake my head. “We do that all the time, Kathryn. We tell them not to cross a street at a red traffic light, right?” She looks a bit confused – wrong example, I realize. “Or not to grab a falling knife. A good rule, because obviously you’d cut yourself – better the knife should fall, even if it might shatter.” 

Kathryn nods again, this time grudgingly. “I get you,” she says. I’d known she would. “Sometimes when you’re sure you know what you’re doing, and when you _really_ don’t want, or can’t afford, the knife to hit the ground, you make a grab for it.” She sighs and runs her hand across the sheet, smoothing the wrinkles even further. “But you wouldn’t tell that to a child, because that reasoning is too complex.”

“I don’t have any doubts whatsoever that our children will grow up with a very good understanding of what you should and shouldn’t do, and for which reasons.” The tone of my words gets her eyes up to me again. 

She nods, slowly, musingly. “You don’t.” The left corner of her mouth twitches upwards, but it’s far less than a smile. “You make it almost believable.”

“I almost believe it, myself,” I confess. I reach out to her, touch her hand tentatively. “I don’t _know_ , Kathryn. Yes, I am scared of what they can do. And I simply don’t know if it’s smarter to stay the hell out of there and worry ‘only’ about security,” as if that weren’t worry enough, “or to jump right in there to play with the crocodiles, and _see_ them at least.” I grin humorlessly. “And their playthings.”

My wife’s fingers close around mine, cool and reassuring, and I try not to think of a time when the ground shifted beneath _me_ because I wasn’t sure whose hand that was. I don’t quite manage; I guess I squeeze back a little too hard. Whatever the reasons, Kathryn moves over to me again, to reassure me with more than just a touch. I don’t hold anything back when she kisses me, and neither does she. 

“Well, at least we’re worried about the same things,” she says dryly when she pulls away. “Now, I suppose you were told not to tell me about this, correct?”

I laugh – more to release tension than out of amusement. “Completely correct, Admiral. Which is why I asked Althea to make sure we’re not under surveillance. She assures me we aren’t.”

“Good thinking, Crewman,” Kathryn smirks. “You know, when I talked about tactical training, I did _not_ mean-”

“-for me to become a secret agent?” My smile is freer than hers. “Do you think they’ll pay me in chocolate, Captain Coffee Bean?”

“Good grief, Marie.” The way she rolls her eyes is something I could write poems about, but then the survival of a discussion like this will set free such giddiness in me, I suppose.

“I know. I’m impossible.” And I wouldn’t suppress my grin for the world.

“Do you think we have time to think about this further?”

I scoff. “They want me. They can wait for me.” Just to see my wife’s eye roll skywards again.


	3. Roosting (November 2381)

Much as she’s inherited her mother’s throaty voice, our daughter can _squeal_. At six in the morning after a welcome-back-to- _Voyager_ -hooray-you-graduated party, that sound is not exactly welcome, nor is the small body hurling itself into my ribs, much though I love her. 

“Mom, Mimi, good morning, get up, it’s late!”

“Good morning, sweetheart,” Kathryn replies with a much more welcome husk. I stifle a groan but manage to echo her. “Why don’t you go replicate breakfast this morning?”

“Oh may I?” Lea is thrilled. _Good move, Kathryn._ I could do without the excited bouncing, though.

“Yes, you may. Go on, scoot. We’ll be over right away.”

I roll over to her when I’m free of the weight of a two-and-a-half-year-old, and watch reddish-brown curls bob through the doorway. Then, finally, I allow my groan to break free. By now, it’s grown to quite a heartfelt, pitiful serenade of hung-overness. Kathryn tugs at my shoulder to bid me look at her, and pinches the bridge of my nose ever so less than slightly when I do. “Come on, Mimi, big day ahead.” Her voice is as bright as her smile, and I barely avert another grunt. Beautiful, my wife is, but she has no business at all being so… _awake_. At least it’s dark outside the viewports, this being space. I couldn’t handle sunshine at this point. 

“Something died in my mouth and then curled up in my skull,” I declare, rubbing my eyes with the balls of my hands. I’ll never get the hang of synthehol. Not without a hypo, anyways.

“In that order? Not very likely.” Kathryn tickles the backside of my arm when I don’t remove my hands from my face. It makes me jerk, yip, and glower at her.

“You,” I tell her, complete with accusing finger, “are far too chipper to be allowed.” I never thought I’d need my endurance training expertise to endure my wife’s idea of waking me.

She catches my hand and kisses the offending digit in a way that completely, fully, totally derails every thought I might have had. Heavens help me, Kathryn Janeway can be exasperating and punishing and merciless when, for once, she’s a morning person instead of me, but she’s goddamn sexy, being all that. 

“You know…” she begins, and chuckles when my eyes turn cautious. What is she up to now? Did she say something about a big day? Don’t we have a morning-after hypo somewhere? “You’re ovulating.”

Huh?

I frown, stymied. Reach out and touch her face, draw closer to her to peer at her, the way I used to do when I still wore glasses. “You’re not Althea,” I conclude. “How do you know?”

She shrugs with a merrily hummed breath – she really, _really_ has no business being so… all of this. “Medical tricorders will do the trick.”

Medical tricorder. Ovulating. Big day. Althea. Something clicks, or rather, clangs. “You don’t mean…”

“I get to share my birthday, seems only fair you get a chance to share yours, too.”

Mercy. “You’re taking advantage of my weakened state. There are rules against that sort of thing. There must be. I’m sure I’ll remember them in a minute or two.” 

“It was you who joined a group that played outside the rules. Don’t come complaining now.” God, but she’s at my finger again. A tactical move of her own, I’m sure, even though she’s refrained from alluding to this joke that’s getting familiar, a joke that plasters smiles over a darker truth. It has taken me a semester longer, but here I am; a new small wheel in a grim machine, and a tactically schooled Starfleet counselor, uniform, pips and all. How Deanna had teased me that I’d wind up in red too, one day, when I’d weary of wearing blue with a little gold up my sleeve. I wonder whether she– but certainly she knows about Althea, right? God, I’m digressing. Run over by a horde of targs, or something. I really need to get the hang of synthehol; this can’t go on. 

“Mooom! Mimi!” I shut my eyes and suffer. Our daughter – Kathryn’s voice, my lung capacity, stopping my wife from such nice attentions to my-

“We’re on our way, Lea,” Kathryn hollers back while I, a little belatedly, try and fail to hold both my ears with one hand.

“Give me a minute, will you.”

“To make a decision like this?” She smiles and kisses me before getting up, quite deliberately misunderstanding me _and_ , on top of that, sliding across me in the most sensual way imaginable. On _purpose_. I’m sure of it. “Take two.”

* * *

“May I offer my congratulations?” Tuvok replies with Vulcan calmness to what Kathryn still feels is a bombshell.

“I’m not so sure whether they’re called for, you know,” Kathryn murmurs. The way his eyebrow comes up is reassuring in its familiarity.

“From what you have told me about your daughter’s conception, I would have thought that another pregnancy would not have come as a surprise. With this in mind, I find your ambivalence… curious. Kathryn.” 

Kathryn barely suppresses a snort of laughter. _Decades I’ve known him, and he’s still uncomfortable with my given name._ “Oh, Tuvok, of course this pregnancy is… well, deliberate. And welcome, too. But…” she takes a breath, exhales it explosively. “Twins, Tuvok! Three children, counting Lea! I don’t…” breaking away again, she shakes her head at all the concerns crowding her mind, finally settling on, “I’m not going to have enough _hands!”_

His eyebrow comes up again. “I take it you are not referring to the number of crewmembers aboard _Voyager_ , but rather your own extremities?” He cocks his head when Kathryn momentarily lowers hers to hide her expression of amusement. The gentleness in his voice subsequently takes her by surprise. “I can assure you that while twins, illogical though it must sound, represent indeed more than double the workload of one infant, I do not doubt that your wife and you will be adequately equipped to fulfill your children’s needs.”

“A Vulcan vote of confidence?” Kathryn looks up at him, head still angled downwards. 

“Indeed. I also do not doubt that the number of limbs at your disposal will be sufficient.” Tuvok pauses for a moment, deigning to ignore the guffaw Kathryn can’t help but give at his delivery, then tilts his head slightly towards the other side. “We have talked before about your options after completing your current mission. This would seem an opportune moment to expand on these, would it not?”

Kathryn’s response is a warm smile and a touch to the monitor. “I miss you, Tuvok.” A mute and decidedly Vulcan eyebrow greets her oh so human non sequitur. “Two minutes of talking to you,” she elaborates, “and the world doesn’t seem so off-kilter anymore.” Her smile widens at the minute signs of gratification in Tuvok’s face. “You’re right,” she goes on, “Marie’s post-grad training on the _Titan_ is scheduled to end in three months, and this mission will be wrapped around the onset of the second trimester. It does seem logical to change gears then, doesn’t it.” Kathryn leans back in her chair and takes a long, deep breath, her chest suddenly up to the task.

“Thank you, Tuvok,” she says quietly, with the last remnants of that very bout of air. “I really do miss you.”

“It is fortunate, then, that Vulcan will be your mission’s final destination,” Tuvok replies without so much as a twinkle in his eye. “And I do not hesitate to tell you that the thought of seeing you and your wife again, and your daughter for the first time, is… welcome.”

“I’m looking forward to seeing you, too, old friend.” Another warm smile, another touch to the monitor serve as farewell. The connection closes, and the screen reverts to the familiar Federation sigil before winking out. 

Kathryn leans forward again, framing a forgotten cup of tea with both elbows, placing her chin in her hands. Twins. One child of three years, and two infants, in nine months’ time. 

The last two years, the necessary balancing of the tangle of their respective duties, had been seriously challenging. _Voyager’s_ crew had played a large part in making things more manageable, as had the nature of their mission. The CO’s little family certainly hadn’t lacked for babysitters, good advice, or companionship throughout. In fact, seeing Miral and Lea play together while sharing a cup of raktajino with B’Elanna (even Marie had liked the brew, though she hadn’t found any sleep that first night she’d tried it) is one of Kathryn’s fondest memories, the frequency of their visits notwithstanding. 

But Kathryn also remembers more empty raktajino cups, remembers waking up to her alarm call and the sound of Marie _still_ scribbling away (oh yes, pen-and-paper notes, and never in any sort of recognizable order, either), remembers dark circles underneath chocolate eyes, and one memorable instance of Marie falling asleep during a very ill-timed moment. 

After Marie had joined Starfleet’s distant learners’ program, she had also agreed to indeed join the Section group that had accosted her. They’d barely had a quiet moment after that, even though their diplomatic mission, all things considered, had gone quite smoothly. Still there had been times when things had seemed… daunting. _I wonder how we’d have stood this otherwise. If Q hadn’t pulled his stunt, I’m certain I’d be greying by now._

Take the time it had taken Kathryn to feel up to being a mother, for example. She vividly remembers the first time it had happened – Lea had been a couple of days old, and screaming full tilt when Kathryn had walked in on Marie and her, coming back from a meeting or other. 

Marie had looked quite despondent, explaining that try as she might, she couldn’t get Lea to stop crying. Kathryn, remembering the number of tricks up her wife’s sleeves from when Miral had been that young, had instantly thought that if Marie was stymied, what in hell could _she_ be able to contribute? So she’d taken the proffered infant with not a little trepidation, trying to find a soothing tone of voice, a reassuring bounce to her gait, or something else that would calm their daughter down. 

And then she’d kissed her, instantly realizing that it had been the first time since Lea’s birth. That kiss had re-established the connection between the two of them, telling Kathryn without a doubt just what Lea needed. Giving it – a gentle infusion of love and reassurance – hadn’t exactly been easy, not as such. She’d had to put a lot of things aside first, starting with her own insecurity. But her daughter’s need had been so clear, so definite, so palpable, that there simply had been no other option. This person needed her. And she had what Lea needed. 

The realization had been overwhelming in its simplicity. Marie had stepped up to the two of them, then, joining their embrace both physically and mentally, adding her kiss, her love, her deep calm to the equation. It had made Kathryn realize how patient her wife had been, too. How she had refrained from putting the slightest bit of pressure on Kathryn. How she had trusted that Kathryn would find her way. How she’d been certain that it would happen. How she’d feared that it might not. 

They’d both been teary-eyed that day. Granted, they’d been teary-eyed not a few times afterwards, but it had been a turning point. 

And now another one was approaching.

* * *

“I can’t end this call, Kathryn. I miss you too much.”

“Marie, you’re barely able to keep your eyes open. Go to bed. You don’t want me to make it an order, do you.”

I’m a full lieutenant, off the _Titan_ and back on Earth since half a week. And I’ve used those three days to the fullest. Following several recommendations of Harry’s, two or three hints of Tom’s father, a realtor’s ‘you have to see that one, too, ma’am, it’s ideally suited to your needs’, I’ve seen at least a dozen apartments, all of them nice and spacious and central and totally out of the question for reasons of mind-boggling blandness. I hadn’t liked to start looking for a home without Kathryn, but after receiving her latest orders from HQ, she’d told me to go ahead, she’d be a few weeks longer. And really, she hadn’t needed seeing those places. Hell, _I_ hadn’t needed seeing those places. 

I yawn, which only adds to my loving wife’s smugness. Enough so that even my follow-up glare doesn’t make her lose it. “It’s hard work, seeing apartments,” I explain. “But-”

“Which is why you need the bed,” Kathryn interrupts me. “I think I’m being reasonable enough, you know. I’m not even touching on the subject of being pregnant with twins.”

“But I need to _tell_ you!” I run a hand across my face. I am shot. But. This morning, Phoebe had called, about something she’d heard from her gallery owner’s sister’s friend, or someone else in some way related to someone she knew, at any rate. And she had insisted, in true, indomitable Janeway fashion. Insisted I go, insisted I meet her there, insisted I would love it. “You should have been there, Kathryn, it was…” I shake my head, my sluggish brain denying me the right adjective. “Tell you what,” I yawn again. “Why don’t we switch to our combadges, and I take you to bed with me, and tell you what I saw today until we both fall asleep?”

I can see her chuckle, I can hear her chuckle, I would love nothing better than to _feel_ her chuckle underneath my fingertips, that low, loving brook of laughter through her belly. But Kathryn’s still ten days away, heading back to Earth from Romulus, the unscheduled, farthest and finally last stop of her diplomatic round trip. I hadn’t wanted her to go there. Jean-Luc’s tale of the coup he had witnessed… at least he’d accompanied her; the fitting maiden mission of the repaired _Enterprise_. And from what I’ve heard (through sources I’ve quite come to cherish), the mission had gone peacefully enough, if it hadn’t necessarily ended on the highest diplomatic notes. 

I blink a few times, but Kathryn’s still looking at me with that patient, amused, bloody smug smile that tells me I missed something she’s said. “Hm?”

Her smile deepens to a smirk that would be quite ravishable if it weren’t, and rightly so, at my expense. “I said that yes, we could do that.”

“Do what?” God, I’ll never again mock her for blaming hormones for her lapses in concentration or memory during her pregnancy. This is getting damn embarrassing, and hormones are an unchallengeable excuse.

“Switch to combadges and go to bed. It is late.” She reaches out towards her monitor to put the idea into motion, and I remember to call out to stop her. “Pardon?” Eyebrow arched, head tilted, hand outstretched, my wife waits for an explanation.

“I’ve got this program,” I tell her, a little sheepishly. “Just a little side project, you know. It should make the switch automatically. Will you let me-?” My hand hovers above my own console.

My request is met with a knowing glint in blue-grey eyes, and a surprised (and completely fake) shake of a head. “The things you come up with… honestly, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you’ve got too much time on your hands. Be my guest – but if this gets me in trouble with Daurannen, I’ll twist your ear as soon as I beam in.”

“Deal,” I say instantly. It won’t get her in any trouble. That had been the point of my little exercise, really – Daurannen won’t even know the call is still open. And yes, working on this has been one reason for my sleep deprivation, but then, I’ve got to do something when my two tenants keep me awake, right? 

Quite apart from all the joys of a twin pregnancy (let’s not go into puking and fainting, right?), telling my handler about the pregnancy had been a _lot_ of fun. Was I taking things seriously at all, he’d asked, pressing the words out between clenched teeth. I’d just looked at him with a dreamily happy smile, telling him nobody would suspect a pregnant admiral’s wife (and _this_ admiral, what’s more), to be a member of a covert organization. He hadn’t been able to think of a come-back to that one; I don’t know how often I’ll get away with that line of argument, but then again, I don’t have to, do I? We haven’t talked about more kids, Kathryn and I. Hell, three kids is a lot, isn’t it? Twins, for heaven’s sake, and a three-year-old; we’ll have our hands quite full, thank you.

I upload the program, and the screen goes dark. A quiet chirp tells me the call is coming through the combadge, and I pick it up and walk over to my little Spartan Starfleet-lodgings bedroom. “Kathryn?”

“Right here,” her voice is a little tinnier, of course, but it’s still her voice. The voice I so dearly love, the voice our daughter has inherited… _I wonder how these two will sound,_ I think, stroking my belly through my nightshirt. “What are you doing?” she goes on.

“Slipping into bed,” I tell her, honestly.

She chuckles again. “Wasting no time, hm?”

“You?”

“Hazard a guess.”

“You’re…” I can dimly hear her walking around, and I know her evening routine. “You’ve looked in on our sleeping daughter, and now you’re in front of the dresser, picking something to wear tonight.”

Kathryn is quiet for a moment, then I hear her soft laughter again. “You sure you switched to audio-only?” She pauses, and her voice grows teasing. “Satin, or one of yours?”

“I _knew_ it,” I snort. “I knew you hid some of my nightshirts away. And here I thought you hated them so much you wanted to rid me of them.”

“Oh, never that, Marie.” Rampant emotion, and the slightest hint of self-deprecation at it, tinges my wife’s voice now. “So, which one?”

“I love you in satin.”

“But you’re not here,” she points out, back to perfect reasoning. “So I’ll wrap myself in something of yours to have at least the illusion of nearness.” 

Again, she sounds a little… defensive, and I debate telling her that it’s perfectly alright that such a prolonged time of not seeing each other should lead to a certain amount of whimsicality. I’m a counselor, after all; we know these things. “You’ll have my voice, too,” I say instead. “I’ll talk you to sleep.” A bit of rustling almost drowns out her chuckle – I’d say she’s changing. I’ve got to stop imagining my shirt slipping across her naked skin; not wearing satin suddenly seems like a huge favor on her part. Hormones.

“So what did you see today?” More rustling, louder this time – sheets. I lie back, too, arms up on the pillow, staring at the ceiling, wishing I was somewhere else… _stop being silly, Marie. Or whimsical. Think back on…_

“A galleon of a building,” I tell my wife, my voice appropriately awe-struck. “But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Follow me, if you will, and let me show you,” I continue, and hear a contented, wordless murmur in answer. “Imagine beaming into a small transporter station and meeting a yellow-necked lieutenant commander who looks old enough to be a grandmother. The only officer for miles around, she tells me when I ask about what her days are like. A bit of transporter duty, a tiny bit of law enforcement, and a lot of general fixing of broken comm. lines and other Starfleet issue equipment. She introduces herself as Soonah Hanoman, and says to call her Sunny.” Have I mentioned that I love the sound of Kathryn chuckling? 

“I told her the day didn’t live up to her name, and she said that was to be expected, this being late winter. Tell me,” I stretch and turn a little, to ease my back muscles, “why the heck is it always Februaries?”

“I have no idea,” Kathryn replies, turning around on the bed to judge from even more rustling.

“Well, at least it wasn’t raining at that moment,” I go on. “Did later on, but not when I was at the station. Anyway, Phoebe beams in, then Sunny sees a man across the street and waves him in, telling him this is Lieutenant Janeway and Ms. Arnis who want to see the Admiral’s Place – you could hear the capitals. Quite fitting, too, don’t you think?” This time, Kathryn’s exhalation is a tad more exasperated than amused. I continue quickly, “He knew immediately what Sunny was talking about; turned out he’s the one we’re supposed to meet. Finbar Seamus Flanagan, and we’re to call him Finn.”

“Irish?”

“Tip of his hat to the toes of his boots, complete with brogue. Love at first earful.”

“Damn. I’ll have Grandner go to warp eight immediately.”

My turn to chuckle. “I would nott sae noh to tat, ma luv.” I try to imitate Finn as best I can – I’ve always loved a brogue. I’ve never been able to pull it off and tonight is no different, but my loving wife graces my attempts with a laugh, at least.

“Good grief, Marie… we’ll have to keep him away from you. And from our kids.”

“Hey, our kids grow up bilingual anyway. Might as well make it three.” Hell, yes. Lea and I have a lot of fun speaking German when Mommy isn’t wearing her combadge. Although Kathryn is getting dangerously proficient, on the quiet.

“An accent to their Standard, and knowledge of a dead language. Groundwork for our kids’ future.” The smile still lingers in Kathryn’s voice, though. “But tell me about the house, already.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I fire off, then pause a bit, switching to story-telling voice again. “Imagine a town hall, complete with steeple and bells, and a marketplace in front of that, lined by trees. Stark black and naked, of course, but they’re maple trees – the square will be beautiful in summer, and stunning in autumn. There’s a library in that town hall, Finn tells us, and a farmer’s market every Wednesday and Saturday, and an art market every second Sunday which we just missed by a day.”

“Art market?”

“Well, it was Phoebe who told me about the place, right? There’s a collective of artists in what used to be a dairy farm just out of town, and regular art retreats and workshops attended by people from all over the place. Kathryn… there’s even-” the coup de grace, I grin to myself, “a wool dyeing mill and shop beyond the hills. Phoebe had waxed poetic about it when she commed me; she’s been there before – she got the skeins she gave you last Christmas there.” And how breathtakingly beautiful those skeins had been, and how cheerful the hats Kathryn had knitted from them, for the Janeway-Arnis family. What goes around, comes around, after all, although giving someone a skein of wool as a present really isn’t all that selfless, is it? 

I snuggle into my pillow, wishing for her cool hand on my cheek – the blankets are too hot, but sleeping without them doesn’t work either. Damn the thought that this will continue for five more months. I wonder how much sleep I’m going to get tonight. I’m firmly past my latest falling-asleep-point, I do know that. And a good thing, too, because I’m far from finished with my story, right?

“Sounds marvelous,” Kathryn sighs wistfully. “But you’re still not telling me about the _house_ , Marie.”

So she’s caught up on that, has she? “I’m getting there, sweetheart.” I grin. “I’m just setting the stage, you see. It’s not only the house that’s important, after all; it’s the community, too, and this one seems quite close-knit, pardon the pun.”

“I’m beginning to think we’ll be entering orbit before you’re done, you know.”

“Indulge me, love. I _am_ getting there.” And enjoying myself immensely in the process, and she knows it. Still, I can’t help but yawn, at which she snorts a laugh that just about holds in a yawn of her own. “So,” I tell her when I can, “imagine walking along a very, very minor road wrapped in fog. Imagine the road winding a little, climbing a little, just enough to make thinking about a motorbike exciting. Imagine dripping wet woods left and right, high towering monuments of trees, and between them, glimpses of a steely sea.

“Imagine, after about five minutes or so, a turn in the road, a branch leading to a much more civilized row of trees, chestnuts in fact, shadowing a gravel road that spits at your shoes in a vaguely friendly way. Imagine reaching a low white gate, and behind that…” I stop, for maximum effect, and to hear her tsk in sleepy exasperation. “As I said: a galleon. Not quite as tall as it is wide, but nearly so, and with a – but more of that in a bit.” This time, Kathryn growls, if gently, winning a wicked chuckle from me.

Oh, the things money can buy, if there’s a will behind it. In this case, an endearing endeavor of an early-twentieth-century admiral to marry his beloved naval timber structures to that new and exciting Art Deco he’d been hearing so much about. I’d been blown away by the airiness of it, the huge garden, the _view_ , for heaven’s sake – the property sits directly on the Pacific, overlooking it some ways north of San Francisco (which will certainly be an argument for my admiral wife, once I get to telling her). Phoebe had been stunned into speechlessness, too, and probably itching for an easel.

“Imagine walking towards it,” I continue in a low voice, “umbrellas finally up against the rain. Take in white-timbered Art Déco walls, slate-grey roof, and honey-colored windowsills. See the screened front porch, neatly divided by three steps going up – on the right, a table for breakfast in sunshine (and Finn, too, assures us there _will_ be sunshine). On the left, pots and tubs, empty now but promising of kitchen plants – herbs, and salad; tomatoes even, he says, this corner is south-east, after all.” Kathryn’s breaths are slowly getting more even, so I stop to see if-

“Go on,” she says softly. “I can see all of it. Don’t stop.” 

I smile. Kathryn’s sleep-heavy voice on the pillow is the next best thing to her being here, in some feeble way. “I will, then,” I say. “Enter the house through a wooden door with an exquisite stained-glass fanlight. A real door, you know. With a knob.” My wistful emphasis on the last three words gains me a chuckle. “No key, alas, but the little sensor array is very well camouflaged, at least. Now – step through and find yourself in a hallway that beggars all description.” Again, I pause for effect (and to judge the rate of her breathing). “It’s large – easily six meters wide, and five deep. But the size is not the thing that captures your eye, nor the spacious, sweeping, winding staircase, nor the little bathroom ingeniously tucked away underneath it. Oh no.” I don’t even try to keep the reminiscing smile out of my voice. “It’s the empty space at the staircase’s axis, and the empty space between its handrail and the wall. They speak to you. Well. They spoke to me, at least. I think they whispered to Phoebe too, but other things than to me.”

“What would those be, then?” Kathryn’s voice is barely a murmur. Oh, it’s a good thing that she’s half-asleep as it is. She’d be far more suspicious otherwise. Would see, in my mind’s eye, the fireman’s pole and the slide; the former smack center of that magnificent staircase, the other snaking around the outside for maximum centrifugal force – Tom will lend a hand, I’m sure of it, and he’ll rope B’Elanna into helping, too. And Miral and Lea will certainly be willing test subjects for the slide, while Tom and I will be glued (well, not really. Oh, you know) to the pole, and Kathryn will shake her head at us all. But I’m getting ahead again, aren’t I?

So, back to our February tour – no slide, no pole, just rain pattering softly on the slate roof. “Now, turn left,” I go on, glossing over her question, “and find yourself in the kitchen, another room large enough to dance in. A fully equipped kitchen, too, much as your mother’s, although with completely different coloring. This one is, like the outside of the house, white-painted wood with honey-colored trimmings and a dark, luxuriant, granite countertop. The fittings are steely grey, and the cupboards are built flush with the walls; there’s really a ship-board feeling about all of it. Copper pots make your fingers itch – the height of luxury, cooking on gas in copper pots, after all, right?” An affirmative noise emerges from between deep, regular breaths, and I can’t help chuckling, but I also can’t help going on.

“See the counter that runs the length of both outside walls, except for the opening that will bring you to the porch and its little future mobile kitchen garden. Behind you, in the corner of the two inside walls, there’s a dining nook with another glass-and-brass Art-Deco masterpiece – you’ll have to hang the lamp higher, though, it’s patently not child-proof. Next to it, a generous double door opens to a full-blown living room, spanning the full south-west half of the building – fifteen meters, Finn says, noticing your awe. And another six deep, just as the kitchen and the hall. This room is completely unfurnished – and you have to revise your verdict from before: _this_ room is large enough to dance in. Other people’s _homes_ are smaller. My apartment in Cologne had been smaller. Our _Voyager_ quarters certainly are smaller.

“And then your gaze falls to the windows, and you notice another double door, this one leading outside, to another porch, and another set of steps going down. You listen while Finn explains about the garden, expresses his sorrow about the state of the orchard, but really, what you _want_ to do is run the length of the property as soon as he says that at the end of it there’s a bench, overlooking the sea.” 

“The sea…” It’s barely more than a dreamy breath. “Always wanted to… have a view…”

“Oh, but you will, love. Because Finn rewards your patience, and he takes you up the stairs, talking about the number of bedrooms (seven), and bathrooms (three, two of them with tubs), and the refurbishments of the previous owners and how all the wood is still perfectly sound after six centuries, you know, all these things that are so important but not really of interest right at that moment. And then you turn around and see another, narrower, metal-wrought winding staircase, and start going up…” This time, when I stop, no one tells me to go on. My Kathryn is asleep, and hopefully dreaming of a house by the sea, sheltered by chestnuts, filled with love.

Phoebe had found me, after five minutes or so, and her exasperation had evaporated the minute she looked up from the staircase’s details.

“Oh, my…” she’d breathed.

The turret. It had sealed the spell, for me. This smallest room, this crow’s nest, this round, arms-width place of windows and soft rainy light and slender struts of honey-colored wood and a view of the sea. 

I can’t wait to take my wife’s hand, pull her up the stairs, and hold her close in that little piece of perfection.


	4. Surprised, again (July / August 2382)

“Mommy?”

“Hush, sweetheart,” Kathryn says without turning around, “your Mimi is finally asleep. Let’s not disturb her, okay?” She throws one last look at her wife, then pulls the bedroom door to and picks up her daughter – if Lea were to descend these stairs on her own, she’d either use the slide and squeal to the high heavens, or romp down the steps like a horde of targs. Neither of which would be beneficial to a highly-pregnant woman’s sleep.

“I found strawberries,” Lea informs her, as if the stains on her face and shirt (and the unmistakable aroma) weren’t hint enough, now that Kathryn has the opportunity to inspect her daughter more closely. “Aunt Sunny said there were, and I found them. They’re yummy.”

“I bet they are. Show me where you found them, will you?” Kathryn takes the back door out and sets Lea down once they’ve cleared the last couple of steps. As soon as her feet hit the ground, Lea’s off down the path and to the right, heading straight for the south-western part of the property. 

Kathryn follows more slowly – she can see all the way to the edge of the woods from here, or more precisely, to the dry stone wall that separates their grounds from the forest beyond, home to small darting lizards and plucky plants with equally small, brilliantly yellow flowers. 

There used to be a garden in front of the wall, but, what with installing security measures, getting used to living here (up to and including procuring Célèste, a fully-functional, authentic, even fuel-driven replica of the car Kathryn had learned to drive on the holodeck), and being pregnant, the plants hadn’t gotten much attention. There are veritable jungles of a prickly, blue-blooming whopper of a plant Marie calls borage, interspersed with sweet peas and occasional lumps of some dark-green, squatting plant neither of them has identified yet. There are clouds of bees and butterflies and other buzzing busy-bodies, and behind that an orchard, overgrown with nasturtiums, bedecked in yellow and orange and red. 

Chakotay has been asking for pictures. Neelix offered to send genetic codes of leola root and Talaxian tomatoes, the former quickly rejected, the latter just as quickly welcomed. Gretchen has been full of advice, to the point where Kathryn had had to take freshly-replicated garden tools out of her mother’s hands. Marie’s fingers had itched just as much, but her belly’s size had dissuaded her from trying to grub around in the dirt. 

_Kes would love this place._

The thought arrives unbidden, but it’s not unwelcome. Kes. _Oh, Kes._ Kathryn can virtually see the Ocampan run right alongside her three-year-old namesake, laughing with giddy excitement at the prospect of scrumptious red fruit, using her keen eyes, her patient fingers, her incredible mind to bring this garden back to its full glory. 

_We will make this garden a delight, Kes. That’s a promise._

“Mom!” Lea’s drawn-out holler pulls Kathryn out of her reverie. Drying her cheeks, she heads towards her daughter. 

“Well, now we know what those plants are,” Kathryn smiles to herself, crouching down and taking the offered strawberry. She barely remembers to thank Lea before popping it into her mouth. “Oh, sweet goodness,” she mumbles, then picks a few of her own – there are dozens of plants, hundreds of bright red cones. _I need a basket. Marie will love this. Shame she isn’t here._

“But, Mom, where’s the replicator?” Lea asks, suddenly, eyes wide. “And how does it know I like strawberries? I never said.” 

Kathryn almost chokes. _Marie would have a fit of laughing – good thing she isn’t here._

They return to what Tom persists in calling the _HMS Janeway_ (good grief, him and his infatuation with the contraptions Marie and he had thought up. Kathryn doesn’t know whether to categorize them as hellish or childish or maybe both, just as she doesn’t know whether to be exasperated with the two of them or laugh tears at their silliness), and Kathryn, dipping four handful of strawberries (well, two, really, plus a few specimen that Lea hasn’t managed to eat on their way back) into the sink and looking through the kitchen doors, spots Marie standing in the hall, apparently talking to someone. 

She sighs. So much for an afternoon nap. Then she notices the grave look on Marie’s face and turns around to Lea.

“Sweetheart, will you go back and pick more when I give you a basket?” Lea’s brown curls fly, her nod is so exultant. Kathryn quickly grabs a small container and hands it to her. “Now shoot. Only those that are fully red, remember!” she calls after the rapidly receding figure.

“There you are,” Marie greets her, coming through the door. “We have a guest.”

* * *

Oh, Seven. From what she says, it has been a logical step, it has been long in coming and nothing if not consistent, but still…

“Seven…” Kathryn’s voice echoes my emotions, is thick with them, in fact. We’re sitting in one of the two huge sofas in our living room (and still, for all their size, smaller ones would simply _disappear_ in this space), Seven between the two of us, and I simply know Kathryn longs to hug the woman who just told us she and her husband are filing a divorce. As it is, she restricts herself to laying a hand on Seven’s arm, knowing that a full embrace would probably not be welcomed.

“It is… curious,” Seven says, and strike me if there isn’t a hitch in her voice, “that although I see the sense of it, the notion should… distress me so.”

“Curious indeed,” I snort. Kathryn shoots me a warning glance for it, but I ignore her. “Of _course_ it would distress you, Seven. It’s quite usual, in fact, that things seem quite clear and sensible on the rational level and still kick you from your shoes emotion-wise, you know.”

Seven’s head tilts in silent recognition, then her eyes come up again and land on mine. “This dichotomy is disconcerting.” 

“Oh, I’ll say,” I nod at her. “And yet it is easiest to just accept it as a fact of life. You’ll run that enhanced brain of yours ragged trying to reconcile it. After all, it’s perfectly human to feel this way.”

Kathryn swats my thigh. “This could have been put _way_ more diplomatically,” she says with a glare, “but essentially, Marie is right, Seven. It’s not only human to feel this way; it’s okay, even necessary to feel this way.”

“There is a multitude of emotions,” Seven says with a stubborn shake of her head, “not a single one that could be labeled as ‘this way’.”

“But that’s exactly it,” I tell her. “Sadness, anger, maybe resentment, maybe gratefulness, maybe hope at a new beginning – maybe even guilt at feeling like this is a new beginning.” I’m just spouting things, but Seven nods, even at the last one, looking a bit surprised. “And maybe other emotions too,” I go on, “emotions that are even more difficult to label.”

“Your reactions indicate that this is indeed a usual response.” Seven stares straight ahead, in her very individual interpretation of ‘musing’. Then her eyes snap to Kathryn again when my wife nods and moves her hand from Seven’s arm to her thigh, next to where Seven’s own hand sits. 

“And we will help you find your way through it, if you want to, Seven.”

“I would…” Seven’s head drops. She swallows and takes Kathryn’s hand in hers, and suddenly my sight is blurry and I have to rely on the young woman’s voice to gauge her emotions when she says, “I would appreciate that.”

~~~

“I can’t do this,” I hear myself plead. And I’m right. I can’t. I’m barely keeping my head up. They can’t think I’m-

“You’re doing fine, Marie.” My wife’s voice is patient. Patient! I would strangle her, if I could _do_ anything.

“I am _not_ doing fine! I’m not doing anything! Make it stop!” Another contraction hits me and things _swim_. 

“Hang your head if you want to, love, that’s alright. I’ve got you.” We’re in water. Why are we… we talked about this, didn’t we. A water delivery. “Remember breathing, will you?” 

I whimper, and then she’s _here_ with me. The feeling of her lips on mine pales, though, compared to the gentleness she catches my mind with. I can dimly feel her taking my weight when my arms buckle – I’m on all fours, she’s kneeling in front of me, and I know she’s strong, but she can’t just – _hush, love. It’s alright. I’ve got you. Just concentrate on pushing, and breathing._

“Which of them?” It comes out a bit crossly, but she _is_ asking too much, isn’t she? How can she ask this way anyway? I never heard her before, did I?

She chuckles softly. “Right now, breathing.”

“Shouldn’t it be over already? I gave birth, didn’t I?” 

My back arches with another wave. “That’s the way with twins,” I hear her voice at the edges of consciousness.

~~~

“Congratulations,” Chakotay says, bringing two cups of hot chocolate to our bedroom and sitting down in… a chair? Someone must have brought it up sometime along the way; I surely wasn’t in any condition to notice. And now I’m so goddamn wound up I can’t see straight, but he’s insistent, isn’t he, pressing the cup into my hand before I can get up. I don’t think my legs would keep me up anyway. “Kathryn and I have put your daughters to bed. They’re perfect, Marie.” And my hands are still shaking too much to hold a fragile infant. He doesn’t need to say it. We both know it. He gave me a half-filled cup just now, didn’t he, not a full one. Hell, he held the first-born twin to my breast to help her start nursing, much as Kathryn held our youngest daughter. And don’t ask me how that had felt, or looked. At least my glucose levels are getting up to par again, courtesy of his cocoa.

“Thanks for being here.” I put my free hand on his arm. It’s not his fault I’m still trembling like a storm-shaken poplar. On the contrary – Chakotay had really gone out of his way to be here with us, in all manners of kinds of speaking.

He’d called the evening of the very same day Seven had appeared at our doorstep. Kathryn, handily upstairs for tucking Lea in, had taken the call in what we grandly call her office, talking with him for what seemed like hours to my – admittedly (and hormonally) sub-par – sense of time. Then she’d relayed the call down to our living room where Seven and I had been sitting, and the four of us had decided that a visit of _Voyager’s_ current captain to _Voyager’s_ former captain’s home could be a manageable feat instead of a complete disaster. 

We had wanted, from the beginning, to have him – well, both of them, really – present at the birth of our twins. His frequent calls had kept Kathryn from feeling too bottled up behind her desk, for which I’ll be eternally in his debt, and whenever _Voyager_ had been in the Sol system, we had made sure to meet with all our family members still on the ship.

When Kathryn had heard, two months ago, that _Voyager_ had been sent to an in-depth scientific study of the Briar Patch, she’d been almost certain that their presence at the birth wouldn’t happen, though. That no-one would brave the ten-day flight, however comfortable _Garuda_ might be. That any of them would leave at all – ever since they’d started out, Chakotay and Althea had carried on so about the Ba’ku lifestyle, and even Seven had, several times, expressed appreciation of the region’s abundance of scientific phenomena. And then Seven had shown up, proving that someone would, indeed, brave that flight even in a class-six shuttle. They’ll still have to smooth it over, of course (appropriating a shuttle and leaving the designated mission is no small matter, even if Seven still isn’t a commissioned officer), but there she was, and then Chakotay’s call came, and now they’re here – Althea too, although I have no idea where she is right this moment. But anyway.

Well, _Voyager’s_ first officer had been in that region of space before, _and_ she’d certainly held her own during Kathryn’s maternity leave. And the Doctor is used to working sickbay on his own, isn’t he. And, on a completely unrelated note, Chakotay’s timing had been right on target – mere hours after they’d beamed in, I’d been officially in labor, as if the twins had waited for them (wouldn’t put it past Althea, either). 

Another eleven, and we’re a family of five. 

“My pleasure,” Chakotay says simply, in response to my thanks, and I roll my eyes. As if I hadn’t seen Althea regenerating away the bruises I’ve dealt him. “If only to finally see this place for myself. It’s incredible, Marie.”

“Isn’t it, though?” I beam at him – our home can do that, still, after half a year of living here. “I mean, we don’t have much snow in winter, but – it’s gorgeous, isn’t it? Has she taken you up to the crow’s nest?” I’m still lamenting the fact that I haven’t been able to go for months for reason of sheer girth (that last staircase is _narrow_ ), and probably won’t manage over the next couple of days either. It must be beautiful up there right now, what with sunshine flooding the meadows and woods. Oh yes, sun’s coming up – like their birth mother, these two seem to be creatures of the morning, so far. 0428 and 0505 hours, respectively; August fourth, 2382 – my grandmother’s birthday, too.

“Kathryn took me up there when Althea ordered us to get some rest. She even removed the roof panel to show me the view of the stars,” he smiles. So they’d been gone during labor? _When?_ God… I’ll never tease Kathryn for not remembering details of Lea’s birth again, ever. “We saw one fall,” Chakotay goes on. “I asked her to make a wish, and she-”

“Let me guess,” I cut him off wryly. “Superstition 101 with Admiral Janeway.” She will teach Astrotheory next semester, after all, not to mention Interspecies Protocol (and wouldn’t I like to sit in on that one).

“Now, now, Lieutenant,” my wife drawls from the doorway, “no call for that. Besides, it’s you who still doesn’t have a medicine bundle, if I remember correctly.” She’s got a cup of something hot, too – Chakotay’s and my cocoa is already half-cold, but that’s alright, seeing as the cups are almost empty, too. Then the scent coming off her cup hits my nose, and I’m in love, with soft golden early morning sunshine and coffee fumes on my wife’s skin and probably hormones, too. 

“So _I_ took a wish,” Chakotay cuts in, throwing his dimples around. “On behalf of your daughters. I daresay the size of the meteor warranted a wish for two.”

“Thanks, Chakotay.” Kathryn’s hand on his shoulder tells him how touched she is, or maybe it’s the look in her eyes. In any case, he pulls her down for an embrace, his arms tightening around her shoulders. “Where’s Seven, anyway?” It’s sweet how grumpy my wife can sound when emotions overwhelm her. It’s doubly sweet how she snuggles up to me the moment Chakotay lets her go. It’s incredibly sweet how, in all her apparent need to get close to me, she’s still mindful of not spilling her coffee.

“I think she and Althea went outside to look at the orchard,” Chakotay replies. “Irene’s a farmer; she’s expressed interest at what’s growing here, and I suspect Seven wants to give her a full report. When we told Irene that the gardens have gone neglected for a few years, she offered her expertise immediately.” His face falls for a moment, doubtlessly at the thought that there will no longer be a ‘we’ to call Seven’s aunt. Or maybe there will – he is here to work on saving at least a friendship, if not a marriage, after all. I can see him tear his thoughts away, though, and his smile reappears. “Oh – and now that it’s time, I’m also to relay her best wishes for the babies.” Dimples, even, and I happily return his smile. Then his expression changes yet again, turning slightly fatalistic. “I’ll go look for her, shall I?”

When Kathryn does nothing to stop him, I know the expression of her face must have asked him to. So she wants to tell them, still. Probably has already asked Althea to give the four of us some privacy, too; would be in character. “You alright?” I ask her.

“I’ll never tease you again, for being so awed and protective of me after Lea’s birth,” she tells me gravely, putting her cup on his vacated chair, and looks at me indignantly when I start to chortle. 

I kiss her quickly – well, at least I intend to. Althea’s gift has grown stronger over the years, I’d swear to that, and the kiss draws out into a long moment of sharing. Through it, I can sense Kathryn slowly coming down from a mixture of shock, wonder, and furious helplessness, and I suppose she senses quite clearly how I am finally getting a grasp of things, too. 

We’re a family of five now. I’ve given birth. And though I reckon I’ve done a proper job of it, I don’t think I’ve been as brave as Kathryn’s been at Lea’s birth, nor as restrained; never mind my training – when I’m in pain, you damn well know it. 

Good thing Tom and B’Elanna agreed to take care of Lea over the last few days. Much as our daughter, being our daughter, has been well aware of what’s been happening, I don’t think she would have taken kindly to hearing her Mimi make the rafters shake. No, the Parises came for her two days ago, promising to return from Mars the moment things had calmed down enough – after all, we’d done the same with Miral during little Harry’s birth, hadn’t we (God. Harry Paris. How _could_ they name– ah well. Don’t get me started, so.) I briefly wonder if Kathryn has contacted them already, then chuckle when I feel her affirmative murmur tickle my lips – as I said, our connection has gotten stronger.

“I’m fine, really,” I tell her, pulling away a little.

She certainly knows it, too, but still her eyes are solicitous, blue-grey as the sea you can, on sunny days like this one, see from our crow’s nest. Then she gives an eye-rolling little laugh. “I didn’t know how to feel, you know – angry at myself for subjecting you to this, awed at how you handled it, happy because it meant our daughters were on their way into this world. I still don’t.”

“I’m with you there,” I tell her, stretching carefully to appease several major muscle groups, and to bring me more snugly into her arms. “Which is why,” I continue, by way of explaining my amusement a little while ago, “I vowed to myself just then never to tease you about Lea’s birth again.”

She joins my laughter. Morning sunshine, falling freely across our bed because we never got around to closing the shutters last night, warms my back, my wife warms my front, love warms me inside… so it might be hormonal, but holy flow, for a blessed moment I have not a care in the world. 

Then I hear the sounds of our two houseguests’ return on the stairs and sigh, my heart growing heavy for them.

“Will you tell them?” I ask Kathryn, while drowsiness calls, at last, to cash in a few checks.

“Tell us what?” Chakotay asks, after letting Seven precede him into the room. I blink a few times, dithering between annoyance at being denied sleep, gratefulness that I’ll be able to witness this, and worry that my sleepiness won’t let me. I nudge Kathryn with my shoulder – I’m certainly not up to talking. I’ll be glad when I’ll turn out to have been up to listening. 

“Something that is important to us, Chakotay,” she tells him, in her most soothing voice – still, he frowns. Even Seven looks apprehensive. “Please – would you sit down?” She gestures towards the chairs and bed, indicating without a word that neither she nor I would take it amiss if one or both of them chose to share the bed with us. In a manner of speaking. 

“I’m not sure how to say this,” Kathryn goes on. That, now, I can understand, after all that’s happened in the last two weeks. Still, the fact that she’s saying these words amazes me. For all that she’s more outspoken with her inner workings by now – to admit to something like that? I take her hand in silent support, and she squeezes it tightly before going on. “We’ve spoken about this a long time ago, Marie and I, but even then we were not certain how you’d take it. And now that you… well. I’m sure we can work something out. I mean you can accept, or decline, either of you, as you wish,” _holy thumbscrew, Kathryn, don’t torture them. Come out and say it._ My turn to squeeze her hand now, and, connection or not, I’m certain she knows what I’m trying to say.

She takes a deep breath. “You see, we want the two of you to be our daughters’ godparents and guardians, should anything happen to us. And we want to start with that by having you in on the name-choosing part.”

Two triangles of stunned o’s, opposite us. Yes, even Seven’s mouth is ajar. 

“You don’t have to say anything right now,” I add, sensing that it’s called for. “You might want to think about it, talk about it, what with all that’s happened. Please, by all means do so – a birth certificate,” I smirk a little, “is perfectly capable of waiting for a name.” We know that much from Lea’s birth, after all. 

“I second the necessity of further discussion.” Seven’s eyes fill, suddenly, and, in a move that’s completely unexpected, she scoots forwards to embrace first me, then Kathryn, almost collapsing into my wife’s arms. “Nevertheless, and regardless of all eventual decisions,” she says in precise tones that quite clash with the softness of tears on her cheeks and the fact that her voice is muffled against Kathryn’s shirt, “it is a… most generous offer. Thank you.” And where, from anyone else, those last two words would have been too… well, _small_ – from Seven, _knowing_ Seven, they’re… they fill me, to overflowing. Kathryn too, and her eyes. One of her hands reaches out to Chakotay, I mirror her, and serious, if soggy, closeness ensues. 

An hour later, the two youngest members of this family have one name to ground them and one to fly with them to the stars, continuing a tradition (if you can call it that) begun at our eldest’s naming. Oh, I’ll never forget the look on Kathryn’s face when I’d suggested Kes as a name for our daughter, and… well, when Kathryn had put forth ‘Lea’ for consideration, I’d joked about her being half lioness, and how that made our daughter a quarter lion at least, until Kathryn had told me very patiently that, in fact, she’d meant to honor my Opa with the female version of his name. Things had been a bit teary, after that, too – why is it, anyway, that naming babies is such a damp affair? 

Our first-born twin had won her name by threefold (female) consent and one (male) abstention, for a traditionalist grandmother and a son who’d learned to embrace his people’s traditions only after he’d run off to the stars. Elsa Teya Janeway. It sounds so… musical in cadence that somehow I can’t help but hum it. I’m sure she’ll inherit my voice, and Kathryn has already seconded that hope whole-heartedly.

And small, perfect Erin Phoebe – well, obviously Phoebe gets space-sick even on a flight-sim, and really, it had never been a question that we would name one of the twins for Kathryn’s sister. But, after we all had agreed on that, Seven had spoken up (which had been startling in and of itself), and the… shyness on her face, if not in her voice, when she’d asked for her mother’s name to be considered… let’s just say it had been one of the fastest decisions of my life.


	5. Trailblazing (2387)

“You know, seeing the Admiral move through the fair is quite an education,” Tom drawls, leaning his arms on the rail to look down at the crowd. 

I chortle at Tom’s comment. It’s true, though, and I so rarely get to see it that I, too, am feeling educated by the view. Usually, Kathryn is content to let me lead, since I am, after all, taller and broader than she is. And I flow with the crowd, trying to predetermine its motions and to spot openings in my direction, and I’m good enough at it that we usually cross crowded places quickly enough. 

Kathryn, now… Forget swans and lakes, is all I’m saying.

“She sets her eyes, sets her shoulders, and sets out,” I nod, grinning, “and then it’s Moses and the Red Sea all over again.” My hands paint the picture, opening like the pages of a book and drawing apart, and it’s Tom who laughs, now. 

“Sheer force of personality as the energy source of a private force field. I should bring this to my wife’s attention.” 

I have no idea where B’Elanna and Miral have disappeared to. Tom and I are up on the gallery with Lea and the twins, overlooking the people milling about in front of the massive viewports. I certainly don’t mind being parted from my wife this way, seeing as it allows me to get a clear view of that extraordinary process that is the process of my wife through a crowded lounge hall.

“There you are,” Tom calls out to his wife and daughter, the latter greeting Lea with a delighted squeal over some form of sweet B’Elanna has apparently bought wherever they’ve been. “Just in time, too,” he goes on, “I’m needed for the big announcement.” And with a peck (on his wife’s cheek) and a poke (at his daughter’s belly), he’s gone.

B’Elanna rolls her eyes at his receding form. 

“Oh come on,” I laugh at her, “you wouldn’t want him to change, now would you?”

The Look I get in return fully deserves its capital letter for sheer volume of information. No, she doesn’t, but she wouldn’t mind, except for the part where she totally would, and the dichotomy (multichotomy?) is a constant source of exasperation and fondness, not to mention a convenient way to start an argument if the Klingon temperament needs one. 

Balls, Tom, you’re the _man_ , man. 

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Commander Thomas Eugene Paris’ voice sounds out through the speakers a few moments later. “The _Trailblazer.”_ God, his tone of voice. Ladies and gentlemen, The Ham.

“Appropriate, isn’t it,” Kathryn’s gravelly voice reaches me over the eager murmur of the crowd when a ship slowly closes in on the station. Her words almost make me choke on my tongue until I understand that she means the ship’s designation. Close as we are, she can’t read my thoughts. Or can she? I’m sure she was reminded of Captain Proton same as I was, I can see it in the glint in her eyes. And I’d love to tell her that I loved her in that costume, but I had to promise Tom I wouldn’t. It kills me, plain kills me, that I can’t have a picture of her wearing _that_ on our nightstand, nevermind how crowded it’s getting by now.

Still, the smile on Kathryn’s face is immensely proud, and I can totally relate to that. The Trailblazer Project – Starfleet’s latest, and apparently successful, attempt at reaching speeds faster than warp 10 – wouldn’t exist without people like Tom and B’Elanna Paris, Seven of Nine and Icheb, the LaForges, and finally, my admiral wife herself, who, for all that it wasn’t her field of activity in any way, pushed and badgered until Starfleet caved in and green-lighted funding yet another dream of breaking the barrier. 

The _Trailblazer’s_ return, right on time and apparently without damage, is a milestone, I’d say – Starfleet transwarp is past ‘experimental’ and well on its way to ‘established’. At least the bits of what I’ve overheard (and understood) when Kathryn had been talking to her department in the Theoretical Propulsion Group, and later in Utopia Planitia, seem to speak in favor of that. The ship, sleek and streamlined (as if any design of Tom’s would ever be anything else, but apparently, it’s to minimize gravimetric shear) and almost as large as _Voyager_ , enters the space station somewhere beneath our feet, and people start to buzz excitedly.

“This is Captain Kim of the _Trailblazer_ ,” another familiar voice comes from the speakers, and the crowd hushes again. “We did it.” The room explodes in a roar of applause, and Erin and Elsa, all of five years old, press against my legs. Even Miral ducks. Lea quickly follows suit, but theirs is more of a fighting than a frightful stance, and I hide my smile while Tom escapes shaking hands to embrace an admiral.

“What did Uncle Harry do, Mom?” Lea asks over the din. 

“He went very fast, and came back in one piece,” Kathryn tells her, stepping away from Tom and up to the gallery’s rail. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she repeats Tom’s greeting, “you’re witnessing the return of Starfleet’s first fully transwarp-capable ship, another step forwards in our ability to explore and understand the galaxy we live in. Pending further analysis of this first run, Starfleet plans to commission a series of ships to incorporate transwarp propulsion. The _Trailblazer_ , true to her name, has cleared the path along which these ships will follow, in Starfleet’s best tradition: the spirit of peaceful exploration. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”

Again, applause swells, then people disperse, to find inwards-looking windows, or interview partners, or food. 

Kathryn taps her combadge. “Janeway to Kim.”

“Kim here, Admiral.”

“Report.” I suppress a snort at how much this reminds me of being on _Voyager’s_ bridge, close to ten years ago now. 

Apparently, the similitude isn’t lost on then-ensign, now-captain Harry Kim, either. There’s a grin in his voice when he answers, “It’s been amazing, Admiral – the smoothest sailing, and the _speed_ – let’s just say Tuvok was as close to surprised when we dropped in as I’ve ever seen him. No damage to ship, crew or transwarp drive, and from our sensor logs, no damage to subspace or ordinary space, either. As I said – amazing. Wouldn’t mind doing it again, ma’am.”

“I daresay you’ll get your chance, Harry,” she answers him, smiling herself. “You know the ultimate goal of this project as well as I do – returning to the Delta Quadrant to re-establish the connections we made there. We need good people on that mission, people with DQ experience, and I can think of no one who fits that bill better.”

“Thank you, Admiral. I trust I’ll see you at the reception?” _Oh, smooth, Harry._ He’s probably drowning in paperwork, if he emulates his old captain as closely as it has always seemed. 

The slightly sardonic fondness in Kathryn’s smile tells me she’s thinking along the same lines. “Of course, Captain. Don’t let me detain you – Janeway out.”


	6. Confounded (2391)

“I hate you! I hate all of you! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” The litany disappears up a staircase. There’s stunned silence around the table, then a flurry of action: Lea lets out a forlorn wail and runs towards the back door, B’Elanna’s chair hits the floor when she jumps up to follow her daughter up to her room, Marie shoots Kathryn a strangely blank look and gets up to chase Lea, Kathryn and Tom share a look of pure and utter confusion and exhale simultaneously. 

Then Tom scratches the back of his head. “Good thing Harry, the twins and Marlene are with the O’Briens, then.” 

Kathryn drops her head to her hands, resting her elbows on top of the dinner table. “Definitely,” she breathes. “Tom, what _was_ that?”

“Beats me,” he shrugs. “Miral has been like ever this since we came back. I’d thought she’d love this, I thought she’d love seeing her…” His mouth drops open, works mutely for a moment. It would look comical, if he wasn’t blanching as well.

“Tom?”

“I can’t believe-” He shakes his head very, very slowly from side to side. “Stupid. Stupid! Shit!” His chair scrapes across the floor as he, too, gets up, ready to follow his daughter and wife. 

“Tom!” _Good grief, I sound nothing like I want to sound. Pleading with Tom Paris? What on Earth…!_ At least it makes him stop, hearing his former commanding officer all frantic. “What the hell just happened?”

Eyes still on the bit of upper floor visible through the doorway, Tom sighs, tapping the door jamb with the flat of his hand once, twice, three times. A fourth time. Then he turns around to Kathryn with the gravest look she’s ever seen on his face. The fact that they can clearly make out shouting voices, if not words, upstairs doesn’t seem to help.

“I used to hate it,” he says, and Kathryn shakes her head, completely thrown for what he might mean. “My dad,” he continues, not really looking at her. “He’d go on missions like, forever, and I hated when he was gone and I hated when he got back.” Again, his hand comes up to the back of his head and he rumples the short-cropped hair there. Then he suddenly seems to remember who’s listening to his ramblings, and freezes.

“I know what you mean,” Kathryn nods slowly, trying to dissipate his discomfort. “I didn’t exactly hate my father’s work-” _didn’t I?_ “-but I understand what you’re saying.” Tom throws her a quick, grateful grin. “But that is why we brought our kids with us, isn’t it?” she goes on, hating how insecure she sounds again. “So that they wouldn’t feel alienated like we did?”

“So instead we alienate them from their childhood home.” The words seem to fight their way out of Tom Paris’ throat. “I can’t believe we didn’t anticipate… Deanna even told us!”

Kathryn’s mind starts a slow spin, turning in time with the plethora of thoughts running circles in it. “Told you what?” _And why hasn’t she told me? Surely I should know it too, whatever it is?_

Tom sighs again, dropping his forearms to his knees and scrubbing his thinning scalp for a moment before looking up. “I think she talked to Marie, too, you know. What with you being so busy.”

“Just what exactly are we talking about here, Tom?” And finally, her voice, finely honed instrument that it is, obeys Kathryn, making the commander cringe with its relentlessness. 

“Kids growing up on a starship,” he murmurs to his knees. A deep intake of breath straightens his back and he meets Kathryn’s eyes again. “From what I remember, it had something to do with how long three years are when you’re barely more than a decade old. She said to expect a few bumps and lumps when settling back in, you see. Old playmates having found new friends and so on.”

His words scatter the frantic dancing of Kathryn’s thoughts like armed security officers breaking up a costume ball. Because he’s not only talking about Miral, is he. _The same holds true for Lea._ Of course it does. Three years, of a lifetime of twelve. 

The trip on the newly commissioned, refitted-Excelsior-class _USS Newton_ had been a full-fledged deep-space science mission, and they’d covered an incredible amount of ground, thanks in part to her transwarp drive, but also to the sheer number of science officers aboard her. And of course Kathryn had pulled every single string to get the command. And of course both she and Marie had wanted to show their daughters the marvels of traveling through space, of exploring, just as much as they’d wanted them to experience the wonders of birdsong and ladybugs and garden-grown strawberries. _Did we choose wrong?_ It hadn’t seemed that way, not when they’d been aboard, not when they’d returned to Earth two months ago.

“But…” Kathryn murmurs, “Lea and Miral…” 

“Yeah,” Tom huffs a bitter laugh, “one on Earth, the other on Mars. Works out so well, right? And I… I, uh, get the nagging feeling that Miral’s… growing up, you know. Uh, faster than Lea, I mean. No offense intended-” Kathryn responds to his hasty addition with a tired wave of her hand. Just as she’s assured B’Elanna all these years ago, it’s good to hear someone talking as a friend, not an officer. “But,” Tom goes on, “I mean, she’s quarter-Klingon, right, and frankly, we’ve been expecting puberty for a while now, and…” As if on cue, something crashes and shatters upstairs, and he drops his face to his hands and groans. “God.”

Kathryn worries briefly where Marie and Lea might have disappeared to, but on the other hand, it is quite… convenient, is it, not to have Lea listening in. “You know,” she tells Tom’s still-lowered head quietly, “Lea will _run_ to our monitor each time a call comes in, and it’s heartbreaking to see her face fall when the call isn’t for her. To tell you the truth, I had been hoping that Miral would call a bit more often, but I never appreciated… Of _course_ Miral’s got her own troubles.” She hesitates for a moment, then goes on, talking more to herself than to the _Newton’s_ former first officer. “So our eldest is looking for her old friends, and sees only kids who have been ground-bound while she went to space. And three years _is_ a hell of a lot of time to be away.” She’s got to talk to Marie about this. About what Troi might have said, and why whatever that has been hasn’t reached her, Kathryn’s, ears.

“Our daughters didn’t only go to space, Admiral,” Tom says, his voice muffled by his hands. “They were the _Newton’s_ princesses, and they knew it.”

“I never wanted special treatment for my daughters,” Kathryn says instantly, feeling defensive. 

“Right,” Tom gives a shaky version of his usual grin, “because that works so well when Mom’s the boss, commanding the ship and taking special trips with you, to the holodeck, to engineering, to scientists with exciting discoveries.” He lifts his hands to douse Kathryn’s glare before she can call it up. “No offense, Admiral, I _know_ we did the same with Miral and Harry. And of course everyone just doted on the twins,” he adds with a hint of a twinkle in his eyes. 

Oh good grief, yes. Those merry troublemakers. Well, one of them, at least; Erin is almost frighteningly well-behaved. And they’re both equally alarmingly beautiful, even to their mother’s eyes; Chakotay’s latest gift to his god-daughters, wordlessly sent via old-fashioned courier service a few months ago, had been a sturdy stick, as a matter of fact, a stick he’d found on whatever planet _Voyager_ had been orbiting; a stick that had mystified the twins and reduced Marie to a heap of laughter as she’d weakly brandished it about. And while Marie insists on praising Kathryn’s genes for all their daughters’ looks, Kathryn has always thought her wife to be her own kind of handsome. So, while Lea had inherited Marie’s coloring but very visibly Kathryn’s physique, Elsa and Erin are, in a manner of speaking, six of one mother and half a dozen of the other; an ever-growing, blue-eyed, curly-haired mixture of them both, only subtly different in their facial bone structure. 

By mid-mission, four-year-old Elsa Janeway had been well aware of the fact that people had next to no chance of telling her apart from her sister, Seven and Icheb being the rare exceptions. Icheb, lieutenant junior grade in Stellar Sciences with an unrivalled knowledge of the _Newton’s_ interior layout, had always been the one to find Elsa when she’d made yet another escape from the classroom – Kathryn had a nagging suspicion that Marie, after seeing their friendship bloom, had asked the head of his department to allow for that duty. Seeing as her wife had been ship’s counselor, _and_ seeing as said head is sitting in front of her right now, still rubbing his forehead dejectedly, that probably hadn’t been too hard to achieve.

And Seven and Erin, improbable though it might have seemed to some… well, Erin loves to learn through watching, and Seven doesn’t mind being watched in what she does, Kathryn has to acknowledge that. So the _Newton’s_ ‘civilian advisor to Stellar Sciences’ had grown quite close to the young girl, in a wealth of silent hours. The only thing the Janeway family had to contend with had been Erin’s unexpected vocabulary. Or so Kathryn had thought until now, shaking her head to pull her thoughts back to the present.

“So I probably shouldn’t take the offered follow-up mission, is what you’re saying.” The thought sits leaden in Kathryn’s mind. Nechayev’s message had almost made her giddy, and she’d been convinced that her family would like it just as much as she did. Those three years definitely had not stilled Kathryn Janeway’s appetite for the stars – there are silent hours when she wonders if anything will ever accomplish that.

Tom’s hands come up again. “I’m not saying that,” he calls out, in a sing-song voice Kathryn hasn’t heard since half a galaxy away. It makes her mouth twitch, and he, blast him, sees it. Of course he does. “But now that you’re mentioning it… I mean, I’d sort of feel obliged to offer to come along, you know, but I know how much B’Elanna wants to head up the Propulsion Group, and… uh…” His words fail in the face of his ever-widening grin at the look that spreads across the face in the chair in front of him.

“I get you, Commander,” Kathryn drawls, then gives in to her own smile. It does come, if not easily, then at least with a certain and surprising amount of confidence that letting go of this mission is the right decision.

* * *

“We need to talk.” Kathryn looks at me, closing the door of our daughter’s room behind her. I know what’s coming next. It has been coming since Miral ran out of her parents’ dining room yesterday. When I’d returned, a consoled and reassured Lea in tow, my wife’s glance had been eloquent, telling me the exact thing she’s telling me now. I guess I’m lucky that she waited until we’re all home, the kids all in bed.

I nod, and she precedes me to her office, of all places. I move across the room to lean against the windowsill next to her desk. Not _on_ the desk, and no crossed arms – I don’t want to appear confrontational, right? She flops into her chair with an explosive exhalation, turns it to me and leans forwards, elbows on her knees, face buried in hands. 

“Tom said that Deanna warned you about what could happen when we returned to Earth,” she tells them.

Ah. “She did, briefly; I think she spoke longer with him and B’Elanna than with me. I’d been thinking along those lines myself, to tell the truth.”

She raises her head, fingers resting on her chin. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Well, the answer to that is both easy and quite, quite difficult. “Because you were wrapped up in your end-of-mission debriefings, and because I thought I could handle it on my own.”

I can see the impact of my words immediately. A muscle twitches. Eyes grow hollow. “I don’t want to be an absent parent, Marie.”

And that, now, hits me squarely. Because if she is, then I’m at least partially to blame, for not including her.

“I idolized my dad as a kid,” Kathryn goes on, looking straight through me, oblivious to my realization, maybe even to the guilt that must be visible in my eyes. “But I also hated how he left, time and again. I remember how I…” she presses her lips together, emphasizing a deepening set of lines around them. “I worked so hard to make him proud of me. Do you-” she turns to me, eyes a little wild, “-Lea’s not… she doesn’t think she has to impress me into loving her, does she? She knows I love her, no matter what, doesn’t she?”

Right on target. And somehow, probably inevitable that Lea should run into the same problems that her mother had. She needs Kathryn. Needs to see that both her mothers are human beings, as godlike as a commanding officer of a starship might appear. Needs to see that those human beings love her for being a human being, not for sports trophies or sciences awards. 

“Lea’s incredibly bright, Kathryn, and ahead of her age, certainly.” We share a brief, proud smile. “But the danger of that is thinking too much. I do think it would be good if we can reassure her that she doesn’t need to impress you, or live up to something she thinks you might expect of her. And she’s twelve – puberty is just around the corner, I’d say, and she’ll probably need a whole lot more reassurance then.” 

Kathryn – well. It’s not a sigh, is it; more of a groan, really, reminiscent of shipboard planks in a storm. “That deep space mission calling out its siren song, love?” I know Nechayev offered the _Newton’s_ next mission to Kathryn, too, after all. I’d seen the look on my wife’s face after she’d taken that call. And I _had_ debated whether to talk with her then, but then the Paris’ invitation had come in, and now here we are.

“Lieutenant Commander, you should know by now that a Janeway doesn’t run nor hide.”

I suppress my groan – like hers, it would have been just as deep and heartfelt, and agonized. “Just don’t say things like this when younger, impressible Janeways are around, will you?” A bit of a wince does creep into my words.

Her head turns to me sharply, a frown knitting her brow. “What do you mean?”

“Kathryn, it isn’t easy to be Admiral Janeway’s _wife_ , sometimes. And Lea is discovering, I think, that it isn’t easy to be Admiral Janeway’s daughter. And however much I want her not to feel like running or hiding, I want that feeling to come from within her, not from self-imposed pressure to live up to a family name.”

“You’re saying our daughter is lonely.” There’s hollowness, again, in Kathryn’s voice, and suddenly she lets her head fall loosely, until her hair covers her face. A bit of grey in it by now – maybe I should stop re-coloring mine, too. _Concentrate, Janeway,_ I tell myself, _stay on topic, damnit._ “And I’m the reason,” my wife goes on flagellating herself. 

Time for a bit of low laughter, now, and a move forwards and down on my knees and to her side, and a hand on her thigh. “Now that’s being a bit too dramatic, love. We both decided to go on that mission, and our kids did have an incredible time there – all of them. They learned a lot of things, _good_ things. But there are gaps in what they’ve learned, and I don’t think those can be filled on another three-year mission.”

“I could take you along,” but Kathryn sounds dubious even as she says it. Her sigh ends the thought eloquently enough. “But that wouldn’t be fair to the twins, they’re beyond themselves to be on Earth again. And Marlene…” She breaks away, and I nod, knowing she sees the motion at the edges of her vision. Our first three daughters have spent their pre-school years on Earth; we want Marlene, the latest arrival to our little family, to make the same experiences. Kathryn looks at me from between her fingers, a heavy twist settling into the lines around her mouth. “But what about Jimmy and Ness and the Baxter’s kids? And the twins and Miral?” 

“The twins have each other, first and foremost and always,” I tell her softly. “And Miral’s got her own troubles, what with the onset of puberty, and quarter-Klingon puberty at that.” Kathryn nods, and I remember she’d been with Tom while I’d run after Lea. They probably talked about that, right? That’s probably when Deanna’s advice had come up, too. “We’ve been back for two months now,” I go on, “and Lea hasn’t seen her old playground buddies more than once or twice, Kathryn. Why do you think she wanted to spend her birthday at Grandma Gretchen’s?” 

My words are not exactly helping. I pull Kathryn’s hands away from her face, holding them as I always do – reassuring, but not too tightly. There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand: Chakotay’s words at our wedding. I’d taken them to heart, along with everything else he said, Kathryn said, I said. “It’s not your fault, Kathryn.” I wait until her eyes meet mine. “I won’t say this isn’t partly because of who we are, but it’s not your fault.” I give those last three words as much emphasis as I can. 

Kathryn sighs, leaning her forehead against mine. “Maybe we shouldn’t have registered Lea in a public school.”

“No, Kathryn,” I reply immediately. We’ve been here, after all. Repeatedly. “It will be good for her to have at least the chance to get back in touch with her buddies, or find new ones who come from different backgrounds than Starfleet. I still think _that_ particular pressure would be even stronger in a ‘Fleet school; at least people around here know us as ‘the Janeways’, not as the Hero of the Delta Quadrant and her family.”

Kathryn groans again, burying her head once more, and I kiss the knuckles of the hand that’s closest. “Good God, I wish it would have died down by now. It’s been thirteen years, for heaven’s sake!”

“The _Voyager’s_ Flight is way past heroic, love. It’s in firmly the realm of legend by now. I mean, all the stuff of legend is there, right? And people love to dream…” My words are not helping, I can see that. “It isn’t easy to be Admiral Janeway sometimes, is it?” I nudge her again. When she launches herself into me I’m ill-prepared, but manage to save us from undignified stumbling by maneuvering my butt to the floor, ending with her in my lap and straddling my legs. 

We sit like this for a while, arms around each other, listening to the sound of HMS Janeway settling for the night. I’ve missed those sounds, the popping of cooling wood, the buzz of insects outside the window, the swell of the sea you sometimes hear when the wind is in the west. I miss the all-pervading warp engine hum as well, and haven’t gotten used to stationary stars again (Marlene is extremely irritated at them, constantly calling out for warp speed). But… this is home, and I’m glad we’re back, and I do hope we’ll stay awhile, for a lot of reasons. 

Kathryn still doesn’t know much of what I’ve done for the Section. I spend the last years (well, at least part-time) committed to some of the Federation’s most closely guarded secrets, and that doesn’t bother me at all, but I hate that I can’t tell her much, and so does she. Of course we’d known that before; for all that we’d agreed on honesty, she’d understood the need for keeping things secret almost better than I had. Problem is, this cleaning-up thing is going surprisingly well, even if there had been less of that kind of tasks about the _Newton_ , of course. You see, if it weren’t me doing it, if Admiral Janeway were to read an anonymous report on what we’re doing, she’d probably be impressed, or at least appreciative. Still, the secrecy had sat ill with me.

And then, one night three and a half years ago, my wife had come home with such a gleam in her eye, such elation in her steps, such an offer on the PADD she’d brought from her talk with Nechayev, that I don’t think she’d even stopped to consider if I wanted to come, if the whole family wanted to come, if it was even possible for a Section agent to go off gallivanting. I must admit, I’d been almost tearfully glad to return to space. It had done wonders for all our peace of mind, too, and that is still, in a way, my daytime job, right?

Oh, yes, three center seats on the _Newton’s_ bridge. The mission certainly called for a counselor. With a crew complement of over eight hundred, including ninety-seven spouses and forty-eight kids, I even had my own little department: mental health, child care, and recreational activities. And how I’d loved my third pip, even if it hadn’t been a full one. Lieutenant Commander Janeway, in sciences blue – but for the odd misunderstanding when calling someone over the comm., we’d done well, too, serving together, Kathryn and I. Just as well as we did on _Voyager_.

For all the Newton’s advantages, I think I’ll always love _Voyager_ best. I still do think she’s is the most beautiful ship I’ve ever seen, and I have a hard time imagining a ship design that could ever change my mind. The first time I’d seen the _Newton_ , I’d been rendered speechless by her size. I know Kathryn had liked _Voyager’s_ size; I hadn’t given it much thought, and the _Titan_ hadn’t been much larger – so, of course, I’d come to think of ships like the _Enterprise_ or the _Hood_ as almost too big. And then I’d seen our new home from the viewports of our approaching shuttle. Quite fitting, of course, that the first major ship to try and employ transwarp drive on a regular basis should be a refit of what even I, by then, knew as one of Starfleet’s most trusted designs. And of course ‘Excelsior’ holds just that little bit more gravitas than ‘Intrepid’ does, but still… it had taken me a while to get used to the ship’s sheer bulk. 

And of course there were so many more hiding places. For that reason alone, it had been gratifying to have Icheb along; he’d always been able to find that little devil Elsa. And Seven and Erin… Kathryn still gets teary-eyed when she thinks of the bond that has developed between those two. Well. So do I, in all honesty. Family, again, even if in a completely different way than on _Voyager_. 

And, after coming to trust that balancing family life and command duty was indeed possible on a starship, Kathryn had found it, in her own words, an ‘incredibly fulfilling experience’ to teach her eldest about space and its beauties and dangers, or to watch Erin sit and read, or think, or dream (clearly my daughter, she’d remarked), even to hear about Elsa’s classroom antics. And of course Lea had put her mother on a pedestal – who, if not Admiral Mom, knew everything about anything our daughter pointed her imperious little finger at? Who, if not Admiral Mom, could make things happen whichever way she wanted? And who, if not me, should have headed that off far earlier? But I’d had my mind on other things, hadn’t I, and those had been important, too, if ill-timed for our family’s development. Which is no excuse, certainly, but an explanation, and an admission of responsibility I take very, very seriously.

As on _Voyager’s_ diplomatic round, we hadn’t run into much trouble, all things considered. It had been a strictly knowledge-gathering mission, after all, and our itinerary had been pretty much mapped out. We’d visited phenomena other starships hadn’t been able to fully examine, or had only seen from afar, and had made a few detours to places that had piqued our interest along the way – or, on one occasion, a phenomenon that had coincided very nicely with our usual February getaway. Oh, Kathryn hadn’t turned the whole ship around, but my admiral wife _had_ commandeered a shuttle, and had taken me to see the Eskimo nebula up close and personal for three days. And what a wonderful three days those had been, too, with swirling, colorful, exuberant clouds peeping in on us, their light far more romantic, somehow, than candlelight could have been. 

Sweet little Sternchen had been born November 13th, 2389, while the _Newton_ had explored a stellar nursery; a true space baby, like her eldest sister. Marlene Stella, we’d named her; Marlene for the simple reason of having seen a picture of Kathryn, one night when Tom and I had been closeted for hours over our holo-novel project, deep in our cups – well, at least he had been. Deep enough, at any rate, to tell me very solemnly how beautiful my wife was. 

Okay, so I’d known about that. Tom had already shown me the pictures of Queen Arachnia he’d kept, hadn’t he? And then he’d pulled up a picture he said he’d found while going over _Voyager’s_ holodeck logs with Seven, and my jaw had dropped to the goddamn floor. This wife of mine can make _any_ outfit look good, right, but a tux? Hot _damn_ ; and it bothers the heck out of me that I’ve promised Tom not to tell – I immediately wanted to have both pictures on my nightstand, of course. But keeping my quiet had been the deal, and buzzed though he’d been, I think he still remembers my promise. He’d been terrified of B’Elanna finding out about him keeping those images, and for good reasons, I’d say, but that’s between them, right? 

However, back to our youngest’s name. Well, seeing as I’m from the country that has brought forth another lady who’d looked stunning in white, pearl-embroidered drag (and almost a contemporary, really, right?), how could I not suggest… and hope to hell I’d never need to explain? Fortunately, Kathryn hadn’t asked too closely after I’d said I liked the name. Agreeing on Stella, now, that had been much more straightforward, what with where we’d been at that moment. 

Once out of my womb and among the stars she’d been called for, Sternchen had seemed to grow unimpeded by gravity, at a rate that will see her overtaking her twin sisters in the near future, I suppose. Our youngest daughter’s first Christmas had seen Gretchen’s home full to the rafters with kids: two Parises, two Trois; two Arnises, on their way to being three – I remember wondering if Phoebe and Kathryn weren’t taking ancient sibling competitiveness to a new and fully perverse level. I also remember Tom’s and my snickering about how many kids had been present at that year’s rendition of _Voyager’s_ homecoming party, and how many of them had been named, in one way or the other, for _Voyager’s_ captain, past or present (twenty-eight. And twenty-eight.)

I’d nearly laughed myself silly again at this year’s 18th-of-May party. The House of Janeway, indeed. Well, we had arrived with four offspring, one more stunning than the next, all indubitably ours. My amusement hadn’t exactly lessened when B’Elanna had told me that the _Voyager_ family kid count had gone up to over sixty. Families seemed to be a theme, Kathryn had remarked, and I’d laughed and reminded her that people tended to celebrate life, after war, and trauma, and grueling times. Seeing as she’d been holding our sleeping youngest to her chest and had just received word that Phoebe had made her an aunt for the fourth time, making their count equal yet again, Kathryn hadn’t been able to say much against that, had she.

And now our eldest is sighing far too often, and looking out the window far too morosely, at stationary stars. 

“What should we do?” Kathryn, pulling back to look at me, draws me back to the here and now again. 

I don’t quite suppress my smile. Social worker I might be, but I’m certainly no more, or less, of an expert on our daughters than she is. “Well, we want Lea to feel she doesn’t have to accomplish great things in order to have us love her, right?”

Kathryn swallows; her eyes fill, too. I know she’s thinking about her father again. She hasn’t talked about him much before, but her words just then have confirmed a long-standing suspicion of mine. So my kiss is accordingly tender, telling her she is loved, indeed, accomplishments or no, until she chuckles and pushes me away. “ _I_ know,” she smiles, with a last, quick brush of her lips to mine. “But we can’t kiss our daughter into acceptance.”

I snort a laugh of my own. “I’m fully with you there.” While a mother’s kiss (well, these mothers’ kisses especially, through Althea’s gift) can make a lot of things right, there’s a time and a place, and a twelve-year-old is, of course, not the most grateful receiver of blatant and physical motherly affection.

Kathryn rolls her eyes, thinking along the same lines, I’m sure. “I’ve tried to talk to her before, you know. Asked her about hoverball practice, or homework, or whether she wanted a shopping spree.” We share a quick smile at the memory of the same sort of activities in Cologne – or Verona, take your pick. It slides off Kathryn’s face far too quickly, though. “Mono-syllabic replies until I left – I thought she was just preoccupied, at the time. Now, I’d say she froze me out, or as good as.” She frowns. “But she was all over me when I did take her to Paris to look for clothes. That was a good day, wasn’t it?”

Oh yes. And the day after that, Kathryn had returned to HQ and her debriefings, and I’d been left with a bubbling, over-excited, over-tired twelve-year-old. But I can work from home, right? And debriefings have to be attended in person. But be that as it may, our daughter had been bubbling instead of morose, and that’s our aim, after all. “Why don’t you do that again, then?”

“Another trip to Paris? A bit too indulging, wouldn’t you say?” Kathryn’s eyes turn speculative. “I could take her other places, though. Somewhere closer. Something that’s not so elaborate – I wonder if…” she scrambles up and reactivates the computer, and is deep in a search by the time I’m vertical as well. “Yes!” She snaps her fingers.

“Hm?” I step up to look over her shoulder, and see schedules that don’t mean a thing to me.

“Bloomington campus still has a thriving women’s field hockey team. Games at 1800 every Wednesday,” her finger taps a timetable on the lower right half of the display, “we could see those and have dinner at Mom’s afterwards.” Looking back over her shoulder, her smile meets mine. “I hope the team’s good enough to make things interesting.” Then, with a small double-take, “I hope Lea likes hockey.”

“Oh, trust me, she will. She’ll love it even if the team’s crap,” I tell Kathryn, as gently as I can while suppressing my laughter. “It’ll be _your_ thing.” I kiss her cheek when she turns round to face me. “And she’ll be seeing Grandma Gretchen. I’ll just need to find a way to entertain the rest of our kids adequately enough that they won’t get jealous.” They will, in any case, but it’ll be their turn in a few years, or at least, that’s what I’ll tell them.

Kathryn’s eyes are a little wild once more. “Good God, I hadn’t even thought about-”

“And you don’t need to,” I wave her worry away. “It’ll be alright. We’ll make it so.”

It’ll be alright. I’ll watch my wife and our daughter leave with excited grins and return with bright scarves and eyes. I’ll have board game nights with the twins and the friends they’ll find here, and we’ll find something special to share with Sternchen, too. We’ll put the garden to rights once more, we’ll make jam with the Baxters and hay over in Bloomington and Christmas cookies before spending the holidays at Gretchen’s home. We’ll have birthday parties with chocolate and fizzy powder and gummy bears till _everyone_ gets sick. We’ll teach our children biking, and knitting, and seeing hunters in stationary stars. We’ll argue with them over homework and boyfriends (or girlfriends) and staying up late, we’ll love our children silly and love our children sane, we’ll love each other senseless, and we’ll be alright.


	7. Captivated (2404)

Fifteen years after seeing the _Newton_ leave with a different commanding officer, four years into the new century, one year past their silver wedding anniversary, Admiral Kathryn and Commander Marie Janeway are being shuttled towards a ship that is, finally, taking them back to the stars again. Every single family member had agreed that it was time, and past time. 

“Oh, she’s beautiful,” Marie breathes reverentially as the new ship comes into view, and Kathryn chuckles, admiring another kind of beauty with a sidelong glance. Marie has never looked lovelier, in Kathryn’s opinion, but then again, she’s thought that thought a lot of times before. The new uniform style, at any rate, nicely hugs those still-broad shoulders, that once-more trim waist. And Kathryn has often thought that silver hair really suits her wife. 

Oh, Kathryn’s fully silver herself by now, and seeing herself in the mirror, wearing an all-red uniform jacket for the first time, had been cause for quite a double take – 2404 had been the year from which another Admiral Janeway had come, hadn’t it? Not exactly _this_ 2404, certainly, but… Marie had found Kathryn rooted in place in front of the bedroom mirror, had stood staring, herself, for a second. Then she’d rushed forwards to embrace Kathryn, and had taken her mind off things in a way both predictable and… pleasant. The memory of her wife peeling this uniform off her with hands and teeth is certainly, definitely, immensely more agreeable than any associations Kathryn might have had before that.

Then there had been more stares, as Admiral Janeway had walked into the reception for the combined crews of her little flotilla, at least from those who, like her, also remembered a silver-haired admiral clad all in red. And isn’t it bittersweet that among these three ships, all outfitted with transwarp drives for the trip to the Delta Quadrant, there should be one called _Voyager_ , albeit with a suffix? Then again, which other ship could lead this mission? Starfleet – good grief, no, the whole Federation had experienced a lot of mayhem in the Alpha and Beta Quadrant over the past decade, but it’s finally calming down, so Admiral Janeway, two years ago, had started to set things in motion, pull strings, call in favors. She hadn’t expected the commission, nor the naming, but… _Back to the present, Janeway._

“You’ve seen her before.” Still, Kathryn readily agrees – _Voyager’s_ successor is a bit larger overall, but still nicely proportioned, for all her powerful engines. Ever since the _Trailblazer_ – or maybe ever since Tom Paris got into starship design, Kathryn thinks wryly – the sheer elegance of Starfleet ships has been breathtaking.

“But not like this – she’s going to be ours soon. Well, yours, anyway.” Marie’s ironic sidelong glance wins her a smack to the arm, but a light one. She’s right, in a way, after all; Kathryn certainly feels… proprietorial. No matter how much Riker had joked that returning to an Intrepid from an Excelsior was a step down, size isn’t the only thing that matters. No, _Voyager-A_ , with Ensign Gene Paris at the helm (who’d dropped his first name in favor of his middle one as soon as he’d been legally able to, finally putting an end to his grumbling about his parents naming choice. Kathryn had been fully alongside him – ‘Harry Paris’ had been a bad call indeed), could fly loops around the _Enterprise-F_ , if it weren’t for the necessity of straight lines when in warp, and the fact that the _Enterprise_ isn’t coming along. 

Which reminds Kathryn – “I’m glad you decided to come along, you know.”

“Oh, very funny, Admiral.” It’s Marie who pokes Kathryn’s biceps now. “That was a bad stunt of yours, _and_ in February, too. Telling me you’d been offered command of a five-year mission and keeping me guessing whether I’d stay behind, pining for you.”

“Two minutes. You pined for two minutes. If that.” Still, Kathryn vividly recalls how wild her wife’s eyes had been, at the thought that Starfleet would send Admiral Janeway back to the DQ on purpose, and for such a long time too. No, Marie certainly isn’t cut out for distance relationships, but, truth to tell, neither is Kathryn any longer. Bad enough that they have to leave their daughters behind, for all that all four of them are grown up – well, at least legally of age, Marie had sighed, when they’d discussed it.

“Which is why I’m calling it a bad stunt, and not torture. Admiral.” Marie’s irreverent grin hasn’t changed in all those years; it probably never will. Kathryn watches her wife turn to the shuttle’s pilot, gesturing towards the controls. “May I-?”

“By all means, Commander,” Ensign Zan replies, his voice far more nervous than his words.

“Don’t worry. I learned from the best.” Marie retains her grin, sliding into the pilot’s vacated seat. Kathryn suppresses a laugh and tightens her hold to the bulkhead – ah yes. Seeing the ensign whiten at the maneuvers Marie tickles out of the shuttle, Kathryn wordlessly pats his shoulder with her free hand. The best – and the most flamboyant. Tom Paris _and_ Will Riker, Marie keeps boasting, but apparently, that hasn’t reached this ensign yet. 

“Show-off,” Kathryn murmurs when they pull sweetly into _Voyager’s_ shuttle bay. Her quip wins her a deliberately jolted landing, she is certain of it – Marie’s better than this, usually. The ensign quickly makes his way to the hatch, fumbling with the whistle they both love so well. After almost a quarter of a century in service, Marie manages not to flinch at the sound – Kathryn has long since learned not to hear it.

“Admiral on the deck,” he calls out, and a hundred and ninety-four backs straighten.

“Thank you, Ensign,” Kathryn touches Zan’s shoulder again as she passes him to address her new crew.

It had been a task, choosing officers to serve on this mission. Oh, there had been applications aplenty, but whittling those down to under two hundred, considering all the requirements… A good mix of Federation species, to emphasize the mission’s message of peaceful cooperation. A good mix of young, bold explorers and DQ-experienced hands. And an understanding, in everyone, of what it would mean to travel, even by transwarp, seventy thousand light years and back. 

For all _Voyager’s_ small size, there are families aboard. On the other two ships, too – well, Excelsiors are large enough for it, and Starfleet had returned to their policy of allowing them on long-term missions a few years ago, when even the most hardened hawks hadn’t been able to cry war anymore. The _Indomitable’s_ chief engineer is a Ferengi, Starfleet’s first and only. The _Newton_ hosts a Romulan emissary, as a gesture of goodwill; her Klingon counterpart is stationed on _Voyager_. When Kathryn had voiced her misgivings about how Alexander Rozhenko would interact with B’Elanna and Miral, Marie had only laughed and told her to hope for the best, mugging furiously, blast her. 

There are over a hundred humans in front of her, still, a good number of Vulcans, several Andorians (including a daughter of ch’Vlossen), a Betazoid couple and one Andaran. Kathryn suppresses a nod to Daurannen and lets her gaze sweep the whole assembly, not lingering for a moment on where her wife has joined the ranks.

“Stardate 80224.3 – I, Admiral Kathryn Janeway, hereby take command of USS _Voyager-A_ and her five-year mission to the Delta Quadrant. It’s not quite the mysterious destination it used to be, but I daresay we’ll have our share of the unknown. I’m sure we’ll brave it with dedication, quick wits, and steady hearts. We’ll be representing the Federation in a part of space that’s barely heard of it, but, since we’re the best the Alpha Quadrant has to offer, I have no doubt that we’ll make a good impression. 

“Our two companion ships might be larger, but make no mistake that _Voyager_ is, and will always be, in the lead.” Kathryn can’t stop her eyes from shining with pride, nor the corners of her mouth from curling upwards. “We have two hours to departure. By all means take your time to say goodbye to whoever waits for you at home, and reassure them that this time, _Voyager_ will stay in contact-” true, too – the _Indomitable_ boasts two cargo bays full of transwarp comm. buoys, “-but, be sure of one thing: When I give the order to engage, I want everybody’s attention on our goal, not on what we’re leaving behind. And I want the _Indomitable_ and the _Newton_ to see nothing but our nacelles when we start.” 

Kathryn’s eyes sweep the bay again, finding their gleam mirrored in every person standing there, and she nods to herself. Her smile into what Marie usually calls a ‘scoundrel’s smile’. “Dismissed.”

* * *

 _Voyager’s_ captain’s quarters are new, different, but stepping up to the viewports is still familiar, and the starry vista’s promise of getting away from all the politicking is so very welcome. 

A snort of laughter erupts behind me when I lay my hand on the transparent material. “And they call _me_ touchy-feely.”

I pull the hand away but keep it at shoulder height, curling my fingers to beckon her closer. Then they slide down Kathryn’s arms as they curl around me. She sways me a little, and, ever eager to oblige, I start to hum a song that fits her rhythm.

She chuckles again. “Not quite what I had in mind, but nice enough.”

“Gee, thanks.” I go on, though. Her head turns to bring her ear flush against my back – she likes hearing my voice like that. She adopted the habit when she saw our daughters do it, in a carry sling on my back, one after the other, back in the days. To think that they’re grown women now… I tighten my arms over hers. “I love you, you know.”

“I know,” she murmurs, “now go on humming.”

“No orders in quarters, I thought?” That rule had worked well, over the years.

“This is your wife asking nicely,” oh, but she’s laughing now, I can feel her diaphragm shake. Then, with a grace that’s still breathtaking after twenty-six years, she slides around me and kisses me, still laughing, incredibly joyful, ticklingly excited, almost giddy by the prospect of setting out into space again. 

“I love you,” I repeat, as if I wasn’t aware of how deeply she knows. As if I could feel anything else when I feel her… _bubble_ like this. 

Her answering kiss is at once sweeter and far more serious, and leaves me a different kind of breathless. Then the door chimes and I can see Kathryn’s eyelids drop to half-mast grimly, promising pain to whoever is disturbing us, before her forehead hits my chin with a noticeable impact. Since I know who’s at the door, though, I just smile over the top of her head (easy, that), and call for them to enter.

“Hey Mom!” Lea is echoed, a fraction of a second later, by Elsa. 

Kathryn’s mouth drops open and stays that way for a heartbeat – not something you see very often, but I daresay the appearance of two of our daughters, one in sciences blue, one in command red, is reason enough.

“‘Hey Mom’?” she asks, stepping around me and regaining a bit of equilibrium and, with it, the infamous death glare. “You’re in uniform, Lieutenant, Ensign. And reporting on a foreign ship, so smarten up, for heaven’s sake.”

“No orders in quarters,” Elsa quips, and rushes forwards to embrace her mothers. Lea follows a bit more slowly, fitting for a lieutenant, I suppose. 

“Is that what they teach at the Academy these days?” Oh, I’m sure Kathryn is still off balance. She wouldn’t snark like this if she weren’t. Thankfully, our daughters know that, too.

“No,” I cut in, “it’s what you get for procreating with Irreverent Marie.”

My wife snorts softly, then gives me a slight push towards the replicator. I leave them to settle on the sofa – same spot, but a lighter, softer color scheme – and return, a moment later, with a tray of beverages. Coffee, black, three cups. Of course. And Jumja tea for me, sweet enough to challenge a Bajoran five-year-old.

“Why are you here, the two of you?” Kathryn still frowns at our daughters, but I can see the trusty coffee fumes ease it.

“We’re paying our respects to the commanding officer of our mission,” Elsa says with wide eyes. God, we’ll need a bigger stick. All our daughter are beautiful, but Elsa has a ways about her that she must have learned somewhere (I, personally, suspect Tom) – it’s certainly _not_ inherited, no matter how much Kathryn insists it’s Vey charm.

“ _Your_ mission.” This tone of voice has caused ensigns to hyperventilate before, for various reasons. I can’t deny it’s affecting me, though not in the way Kathryn intents to. Probably. But seeing as our daughters are Janeways themselves, and certainly not affected by their mother in the way her wife (and excitable cadets) can be, they easily shrug it off. 

“I applied as soon as I heard of the mission,” Lea says, all quiet determination. “Elsa the moment she was permitted to do so.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Kathryn demands, and I wince at my daughters’ subsequent expressions, duck my head when my wife glares at me. Thanks, girls, more practice on those poker faces. “You _knew?!”_

“Only when Lea told me she’d been accepted,” I explain. Consistent, too – Lea always follows her own counsel. I guess we can be thankful that it’s taken her here, into Starfleet, onto this mission – we certainly hadn’t press-ganged her into joining; in fact, we’d taken all care to make sure that becoming an officer was really what Lea wanted. It had been. And she’d _soared_. Top of her class, assigned to the flagship straight away, science doctorate last year, on the formation of proto-stars near the galactic center – my paraphrase; the title had spanned three lines. She’d been afire to join the _Newton’s_ team of scientists, and I think she would have applied to this mission anyway, whichever admiral had commanded it. The thought makes me hide a smile. Lea’s home again, in a way. I can see the warmth of that notion in her eyes.

Good thing Elsa has inherited my indifference to any form of pressure from other people’s accomplishments – when she’d joined, she’d shrugged away all the allusions to her famous mother and her wunderkind sister, and had barreled through the command curriculum with a charming combination of Kathryn’s bull-headedness and my irreverence. Hard to see, really, how she could have chosen any other track.

I’m incredibly proud of both of them. Even if Elsa hadn’t fooled me for a skinny minute – I’d known who she’d spoken to, and what about, the moment she’d ended the call. A posting to the _Newton_ , under ‘Captain Harry Uncle Kim’. Alpha helm, of course. Gene Paris and she had had a not so amiable rivalry from their very first Academy year, which had resulted in the highest piloting score on record – for both of them. And whatever Kathryn says about my flying, our daughter is far more reckless than I am. Good thing that Elsa had ended up on the _Indomitable_ – she’ll benefit more from Chakotay’s calm leadership (if not his piloting) than from Harry’s style of command; _those_ two would egg each other on. 

So, inasmuch as a mission with almost two thousand participants can be, this is very much a family endeavor. Seven is along, stationed on the _Newton_ ; Icheb, too, and his half-Ktarian wife. Tom and B’Elanna have opted to come as well, to ‘keep an eye on the transwarp engines’, even though B’Elanna isn’t in active service any longer. Tom, of course, is Kathryn’s first officer, still an endless source of snark-fights between him and Harry, but then, Tom’s ambition had never been his own captaincy, had it? Yann Troi is the _Indomitable’s_ counselor, Miral Paris the _Voyager’s_ deputy chief engineer, a daughter of ch’Vlossen our pilot; the only one missing (and I know how much my wife’s heart aches for it) is a certain dark-skinned, pointy-eared security chief. But if not even the prospect of meeting the Federation’s ambassador to the Delta Quadrant could persuade Tuvok to give up his teaching post, I don’t think anything will. We have large crate on board for Neelix that bears the Vulcan’s name, though.

Musing on all the friends at our side, I watch our daughters explain things to their mother, watch the emotions flicker across Kathryn’s face while she listens. Pride. A hint of anxiousness. Pride, again. Exasperation, heaps of. Eventually, a forbearing smile, far quicker than either Lea or Elsa had expected, I gather from the looks on their faces.

“So you’ll be seeing a lot of us over the next five years,” Elsa ends, with a hopeful grin. 

“And here I thought we’d finally have some privacy,” I sigh. “Ah well. Family evening once a week, think you can manage that?”

Elsa looks at Lea, who nods immediately. “Of course.”

“Hold it, will you?” Kathryn growls. “What if I want to see my daughters more than once a week?”

“You saw less of us in the last eight years,” Elsa quips, “why start now?”

“One day, Elsie dear, your mouth will get you into trouble big time. And I just hope I won’t be around to feel some misplaced family responsibility.” You have to hand it to our eldest – she doesn’t talk much, but when she opens her mouth, she really doesn’t mince her words. Elsa resorts to sticking out her tongue.

“I think we’ll manage to curb our need for more frequent exposure, love,” I tell my wife.


	8. Revisiting (still 2404, halfway to the Delta Quadrant)

“God,” I choke, halfway through Seven’s message. Kathryn has to see this, although I have no idea what kind of impact it will have on her. As if on cue, my wife steps through our quarter’s doors – as usual, as always, and for whatever reason, her shifts seem to last longer than mine. “You need to see this,” I tell her, stopping the playback.

My voice is thick with emotions, quickening her steps to my side. “What’s wrong?”

“Seven… she sent me…” I punch the restart command into the console with one hand and wave the other to invite Kathryn to have a look for herself. 

“Admiral.” If I didn’t know what this message entails I’d smile at how Seven, friend to my wife for more than three decades and flying right alongside us, will still use rank in a private missive sometimes. “The following is a download of an audio message I received via my Borg implant during our transwarp flight to the Alpha Quadrant. I have thought about this a long time, and come to the conclusion that you should be made aware of it. The timing and our position seem appropriate. I hope that this does not… upset you.”

What follows would upset even a Vulcan, though. Amor vincit omnia? I didn’t know Kathryn knew Latin? Or maybe just Admiral Janeway, well, the _other_ admiral, did, motivated by… well, who knows; maybe even by meeting me. It certainly seems to have motivated a few other changes, from what I remember. God, but this outpouring of… _love_. Time and again, I’m floored, _floored_ , by just how deep Kathryn Janeway’s (either, apparently) ability to love is. 

Kathryn’s hand covers her mouth, keeping in – a sob? A sigh? “She never had any form of recognition,” she whispers, “for what she did. I always thought she deserved one; and this…” she falls silent, hands moving across her eyes briefly, then she does let go a sigh, turning around and leaning against the edge of the desk. “The DTI vetoed it. They had to, I understand that, but…” I can see how it upsets her. What upsets _me_ is that she never talked about this before. From her words, it must have weighed on her mind. Another one of those doors, one I never knew of, and this time it’s been Seven who’s come a-knocking.

“How about a private one, then?” I look up at her, coaxing a hand from the barricade of sternly crossed arms. “Without a name on it, but recognizable to those in the know. I think everyone of the original crew would chip in.” 

She nods slowly, fingers cool around mine. “I’ve thought about that, too. It doesn’t sit quite right with me. I want to see her receive the credit she’s due, but…” Her sigh is lighter than the one before. “I’ll speak with Chakotay about it. And Tuvok, over subspace. Maybe one of them has an idea, they’re good with things like that.” She falls silent again, then looks up at me. “You never told me what you said to her, in my ready room, or after I left her quarters.”

My mouth quirks in a smile. “You never asked,” I tease her lightly, then grow serious as a thought hits me. Yes. Only fitting – the best opening I ever saw, in fact. It makes me smile again, what I’m about to reveal. “You know, I’ve wanted to tell you about my little project for a while now.”

“I don’t follow you,” she frowns.

“I, ah… I kept a… no, you can’t call it keeping a diary, I suppose,” I correct myself. “I wrote things down. When you disappeared for the first time, I didn’t want to forget a single moment of our time together, you see. And when I came here, it helped, too – also during my depressive period. By now it’s a habit, I guess. I’ve been wanting to show you, as I said, thinking that you might enjoy reading it. Maybe our daughters would appreciate it, too, one day, although…” I grin, leaving no doubt about what my next words are insinuating, “probably not all of it.”

“You… how… show me?”

My mouth twitches at how stunned my lovely wife looks. “In a moment. First, though… Computer, access my log database, entry Voyager alpha one five-eighteen, please.”

The chirps are different. I’m slowly getting used to it. Tom tells me it’s standard practice when re-designing a ship, although even he is stymied as to the reasons. “Loading complete.” At least the voice is still the same.

“Begin playback, please.”

It’s strange to see myself. Still with grey in my hair, too. And I’m looking so tired. “Counselor’s log, stardate 54975.8. This report will be attached to the official mission log, so I will limit it to the psychological implications of the current situation. We are currently hosting a future version of Kathryn Janeway, to whom I’ll refer from now on as ‘the admiral’, in contrast to ‘the captain’.” My past me visibly huffs a sigh before going on. 

“When the admiral saw me at the staff meeting this afternoon, it was quite clear that the captain had not told her about my presence on board, just as I had not been informed about the exact identity of our guest from the future. The admiral’s unease and disbelief registered quite plainly on her face for a moment, then she withdrew behind her command persona to attend the briefing, in the course of which she became quite agitated, leaving the room abruptly when the crew gathered behind their captain in a unanimous show of allegiance. 

“At the captain’s request, I followed the admiral to the captain’s ready room where I found her looking out of the window. I spoke with the admiral about her motives and methods.   
After this interaction, the admiral seemed more inclined to work together with the captain instead of following her own agenda. They are collaborating on a plan to facilitate _Voyager’s_ return to the Alpha Quadrant at this point. 

“Both the admiral’s and the captain’s dedication to their respective and shared goals have been expectably strong. The crew’s reaction to the admiral’s presence is varied but continuously professional; the captain has adapted to the situation with her usual decisiveness. Still I would urge her future counselor to try for a follow-up appointment to discuss the possibilities of self-reflection inherent in the situation. I stand ready for a more detailed assessment if desired or necessary. End log and encrypt; allow access only to Captain Kathryn Janeway’s assigned counselor and Captain Kathryn Janeway herself.”

“She never told me,” Kathryn breathes.

“Who, your future self or Deanna?” 

A smile flickers across her face. “Neither.” She rubs her eyes with one hand and peers at me from beneath it. “Still doesn’t elucidate what the two of you spoke about, though.”

I grin. “True, that. I just wanted to get the setting right, you know. I wrote it down from memory, but I think I got most of it right; at least the sentiments are accurate, even if it’s not word-perfect.”

“Well, go on then. Out with it.”

I call up the file from my private logs, then look back up at her. “Right now, or later?”

She raises her eyebrows, then nods and grabs one PADD from the stack. “Computer, transfer file to this PADD. I want to read this sitting down, on the sofa, next to you,” she explains for my benefit.

“Fair enough,” I shrug, fighting for at least the appearance of nonchalance. She wants to read it. Good God.

* * *

“Good God.” Kathryn knows that Marie’s eyes are on her; they have been for the whole time, more or less inconspicuously. “This is… you do have a way with words, you know.” 

“Which is why I ended up providing most of the dialogue for _Millenium_ , I’d say,” Marie says, quite unabashedly. 

Kathryn rolls her eyes, then scrolls upwards again to re-read the last paragraph, wincing and smiling at the same time. “I almost pity her. You really laid into her, Marie.”

“Did I?” 

“Come on, Marie. You accused her of being afraid, of clinging to her captain’s mask, of insisting on being… how did you put it? ‘The one nobly accepting responsibility if things went wrong’?”

A shrug and a lopsided smile answer her words. “It seemed warranted.”

“I daresay.” Kathryn puts the PADD atop Marie’s discarded knitting and leans into the familiar warm strength that is her wife’s embrace. 

“In her quarters, after you left… she cried, you know.” A sigh stirs Kathryn’s hair.

“I know. I knew.” Kathryn’s voice won’t ever be as soft as Marie’s, but it can be just as thick with emotion. “Thank you for comforting her. I knew… I knew if anyone could, it would be you.”

“Did I ever thank you for your trust that day?” Marie answers Kathryn’s astonished glance with a crooked smirk. “You weren’t jealous. And you left and gave her time to regain her composure.”

“Well, she _was_ me, you know,” Kathryn replies with a wry smile. “She needed you.”

“She needed both of us, Kathryn.”

Kathryn ponders that for a while, then nods. “She thanked me, you know. Before she left. Told me she was glad she got to know me again. It was all I could do to smile at her. And she knew. To think that-” she gestures blindly, hoping that Marie will understand what she’s referring to, “-moments later, she started sending…”

Marie catches her hand and squeezes it wordlessly, pulling it to her lips for a tender kiss. 

“I want some form of recognition for her,” Kathryn states. “I should have pushed for it decades ago. It needs to happen.” Then she turns her head, tilts it, disentangles one hand to bring Marie’s lips into kissing range. “And I want to read the rest.”


	9. Aching (still 2404, still halfway to the DQ)

Another message, and another choked intake of air, this time from my wife. Then a stream of cursing that would make B’Elanna blanch. “What’s up?” I call out, across our quarters.

“Erin is pregnant.”

“What?!” I shoot from the sofa and leap to her side to see for myself. Communication via the buoys isn’t a live feed, but at least its bandwidth is sufficient for video messages. 

“Computer, replay message from start,” Kathryn presses out. 

“Mom, Mimi…” Erin is nothing like her sister, for all that they look the same. Elsa would never speak so hesitantly. But Elsa would never… glow like this, either, would she? “I realize this might upset you, what with your just having left, but… I’m pregnant.” Kathryn’s hand hits the pause button again, and then she’s up and _pacing_ – haven’t seen that in a long time. 

“I can’t believe it. She’s what, twenty-three?”

“Twenty-two, Kathryn, but where’s the harm in that?”

“But… I thought… I mean… _who?!”_

I laugh. I guess it does _not_ help matters, but I couldn’t have kept it back if someone had held a phaser to my head. “I daresay Milan Tskitishvili.”

“The guy who climbed our house?!”

“The guy who is our daughter’s boyfriend since more than two years. Really, I wish you wouldn’t reduce him to that incident.” Still I have to say – that memory _is_ precious. 

Kathryn had jerked awake only moments after I myself had deduced what was happening. I’d barely held her back from going after him, nightshirted and armed, spluttering and cursing a blue streak about security measures and what bloody use they were, until I had, with a heavy sigh, engaged the sound-blocking to grant our daughter privacy. 

“But-” she’d looked narrow-eyed at the controller, as if it had somehow offended her.

“Kathryn, she’s twenty, and they’ve been steady for half a year.” I’d been patient and gentle. My wife’s behavior had shouted for it. “I’d been wondering, in fact.”

“Wondering?” 

“If she was interested in sex at all.”

“What?!” Kathryn had hissed, and I’d looked at her, my most professional calm smile in place. It had deflated her a little. “Well. Of course she… but… I mean… does it have to be here?”

“Would you have them out in the cold somewhere? Crammed into a flitter? Smooching in a sleazy hotel room?”

“Well, no, but-”

“You liked him when you met him.” Nothing like presenting pertinent facts, in situations like these.

“I did,” she’d conceded. “He was patient about my helplessness with his family name.”

“That’s him.” I’d stretched languorously, quite on purpose – who says only one couple at a time can have a go? “So it’s all very civilized and sensible. Erin knows about inhibitors, and I should hope Milan’s a nice enough guy to make it a good expe-”

Her pained groan had stopped me. “Bad enough that it’s happening; do you have to talk about it like this?”

“Don’t you want it to be a good experience for her?”

“Well, yes, but-”

I’d kissed her, and that had been that, at least for a while. Then I’d taken the little comm. PADD and texted our daughter. 

“‘He’s welcome to stay the night’,” Kathryn had read, over my shoulder, and had flared up again when I’d pressed ‘send’. “Is he? I mean, good grief, Marie, you’re talking this awfully calmly.”

“Where’s the sense in panicking about it?” I’d had to resume to kissing her again to bring my point across. “Holy bed sheet, Kathryn, they love each other, and I do hope they’re happy, and will be for a while. You didn’t fuss that way with any of our daughters, so why are you starting now?”

“Well, maybe because she’s the last one to… you know.” A severe gritting of teeth had ensued, then she’d managed to elaborate, “lose her virginity.”

“As far as we know.” _That_ comment hadn’t helped. 

“She’s so… vulnerable,” Kathryn had said softly, after a moment’s thought. And with that, hell yes, she’d been right. Erin had, from a very early age, worn her heart on her sleeve, for all the world to see and take aim at. Maybe it’s why she’d been, already then, such a gifted musician. “I’ll kill him if he-”

The PADD, signaling of Erin’s reply, had interrupted her. “‘He takes his coffee black’,” I’d read aloud. “Full quote.”

A deep sigh had moved my hair. “I could learn to accept him.” And with those words, Kathryn had curled into me. 

I’d patted her shoulder. “That’s the spirit.”

Still chuckling about the memory of a panicky boyfriend sharing coffee with Admiral Mom the morning after, I start Erin’s message again.

“I’m six weeks into it, and Baby and I are perfectly healthy, and Milan is beside himself with joy. I know this probably comes as a shock – believe me, my heart stopped, too, for a moment. Which is to say no, we didn’t plan this; I hope you’re not thinking we did, and kept you in the dark about it. My fault, I guess; I forgot to have my inhibitor updated.” She rolls her eyes and I sympathize – forgetfulness is something I know very well, even if I never had it turn out quite that… serious. “Anyway,” Erin goes on, “we’re both happy, and ready to welcome this baby into our family, and I hope you are, too.” She looks as if she wanted to say something more, but the message winks out after a moment of this.

I lean back against the bulkhead, slide down it until I sit on the floor – haven’t done that in a long while, but my feet won’t carry me, for some reason. I blow my breath out in a low, long whistle. “We’ll have to answer her straight away. Can’t have her worrying that we’re upset or angry or something.”

“Answer her?” Kathryn whirls around to look down at me, her arm flying wide with the motion and an intent of its own. “I want to turn the goddamn ship around! My… our daughter is going to have a baby and we won’t be there! We won’t even have live calls!” Her hands comb through her hair once, come to rest at the cusp of her neck. “We won’t be there.” The heartbrokenness of her whisper clenches around my chest.

I scramble forwards and up (I might be almost sixty, but I can still do that), to embrace her. She clings to me like to a lifeline, all grasping hands and shudders. 

“She won’t be alone, love,” I whisper. “I hate that we won’t be with her, but she has a partner who loves her. And depending on where they choose to stay, they’ll have Gretchen and Phoebe and Unre and their kids, or their friends down the road. And Milan has family as well, even though they’re in Europe mostly. They won’t be alone.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to like it, does it,” she insists, talking into my shoulder. 

I kiss the first thing that’s in reach; her hairline, as it turns out. “No, love, it doesn’t. I don’t like it either, and turning the ship around sounds absolutely appropriate, but…”

Kathryn pulls away from me, running both hands over her face. Then she laughs, weakly. “The last years have been too nice. That’s all there is to it. I’m just not used to not having it all anymore.” Her forehead comes to rest on my nose – her breath, tickling my chin, is sweet and smells slightly of coffee, as usual. “I thought I was done with all the sacrificing.”

“You know,” I say softly, “I read a story once where the ruler of a people wasn’t called King, or Duke, but Sacrifice. Not as in beans and sickles and blood, but because of that people’s understanding of leadership.” Her breathing changes a bit – she’s listening. “The Sacrifice, like every Sacrifice before her, was raised knowing that she was the ultimate servant of her people, to give up everything for them, even her life if necessary.”

“I don’t know whether to call that appallingly barbaric or remarkably enlightened.” Her voice is a low as mine, and there is wetness on my cheeks that sure doesn’t come from my eyes. “Will you read it to me, one of these days?”

“Of course, love.” She can’t see my smile. Maybe she’ll feel it in the way my nose wrinkles, but I can certainly put it into my voice, can’t I? I softly start to hum, a song that we’ve shared a lot of times, about how she can read me anything, how I can sing her anything, about a book full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes. My wife kisses me halfway through, and I go on humming into her lips, until she makes me run out of breath.

“Let’s record an answer,” she says when she breaks away, not quite meeting my eyes, but no longer so upset either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marie's words about sacrifice are inspired by the _Farseer Books_ by Robin Hobb, especially this bit: 
> 
> Other men might dream of high honors or riches or deeds of valor sung by minstrels. I wanted to come home to a small cot as light faded, to sit in a chair by a fire, my back aching from work, my hands rough with toil, and hold a little girl in my lap while a woman who loved me told me of her day. Of all the things I had ever had to give up simply by virtue of the blood I carried, that was the dearest. Must I now surrender that? Must I become to Molly forever the man who had lied to her, who had left her with child and never returned, and then caused that child to be stolen from her as well?
> 
> I had not meant to speak aloud. I did not realize I had until the Queen replied. “That is what it is to be Sacrifice, FitzChivalry. Nothing can be held back for oneself. Nothing.”


	10. Familiar (2428)

I drop my bag onto the bench just inside our door. I’m still not used to the difference in gravity and climate here on ch’Rihan, and though Ki Baratan is a modern enough city, that doesn’t extend to transportation. No personal ground vehicles, no transporters – at least they have a functional public transport system. Kathryn has her own vehicle, of course, being the ambassador, but I’m thrown back on using the bus, or tef’ne, as the Rihanh call it. Ah well. My tasks here are of the more clandestine kind, anyway.

God, but Imperial Rihanai is a beautiful language. Derived from High Vulcan and then deliberately ‘aged in a different direction’, it’s the planet-wide language in a far more… elemental way than Standard on Earth is. Three dialects, pertaining more to caste than to region, reflecting a society… well, I could get carried away with it, I suppose. I won’t, though. I’ve been told to restrain myself. 

Still, after almost a year of living here, I’m still fascinated, still learning. I’ve learned enough, though, to know that having a visitor sitting in our reception room upon arrival is certainly a reason for raised eyebrows, even among this people. 

“Shaoi kon, Commander Janeway. I am Einleh ir-Kihai t-Viaen,” she introduces herself with more than the courtesy befitting a member of a noble house – her form of greeting indicates that she considers herself to be of lower status than me, something virtually unheard of towards offworlders, and from a noble especially. 

I look at her for a moment, trying to judge the intent of her words and her outstretched hand. Her face seems slightly familiar, and the offering of this so very human form of greeting seems, again, more than simple politeness. From the surprisingly unguarded look in her eyes, I reckon three things: first, that she’s quite young still, and second, that she’s among those who deem themselves forward-thinking enough to adopt a few offworlder’s mannerisms – I don’t think her gesture is meant as the insult that some Rihanh interpret it for. And thirdly, that for some reason she, Rihanha of noble family, has not joined the military – curious in and of itself.

In any case, I shake the proffered hand. “Jolan’tru, lhhei t’Viaen. Can I offer you refreshments?” _And while doing so, would you kindly tell me what you’re here for?_ I can’t voice that question, of course, but courtesy, again, should prompt her to tell me anyway.

“That would be most kind, Commander.” She looks nervous, insofar as a Rihanha will look nervous. It’s only after she’s sipped of the water I had our house-servant bring, only after she’s praised the ‘Terran delicacies’ served with them, that she clears her throat and meets my eyes. “The Ambassador is a deservedly-honored and much-respected guest of the Empire,” she begins, and I refrain from rolling my eyes. So she wants to talk to Kathryn and wonders if she’s home. 

For all that I’m really, really captivated by our hosts and their culture, sometimes I could strangle them for tip-toeing endlessly around the point they’re trying to make. I never had much patience, and I’m not getting any younger, either. “Thank you for saying so, lhhei. Both the ambassador and I, as well as the other members of our family who have been extended your hospitality, are gratified and honored to be guests to ch’Rihan.” I see her eyes flicker at the mention of ‘the other members’, and suddenly it clicks. 

I allow a bit of smile to curl the corners of my mouth. “You were dancing with Ed at his birthday party.” This time it’s more than just a flicker, it’s a goddamn twitch, and I laugh – I can’t help myself. I see which direction this is going, and… well. She better get used to my style of conversation, right? “Einleh, I didn’t mean to offend,” I offer, nevertheless. “Ed enjoyed himself very much, as I recall, so thank you for being such an entertaining guest. I trust the two of you saw each other again?”

Call me wicked, but I do take a bit of delight in how the girl swallows. To be fair, Kathryn would be worse; not that this visitor knows that. “In… indeed, Commander.”

“Oh, do call me Marie.” As long as she doesn’t call me Oma, which is what Ed does. Then again, I like that better than ‘Granny’ or some such nonsense. Even Kathryn insists on ‘Grandma’. Einleh’s eyes bulge at the offer, and I laugh again. “Is that what you wanted to visit my wife about?” Well, at least she takes this graciously. I’ve seen Rihan three times her age splutter (inwardly, mostly, of course) at the thought of same-sex marriage. Which might be one reason for us being stationed here. 

Then Einleh ir-Kihai t-Viaen says something that will endear her to me forever. “Your wife, or yourself, Commander.” The hint of an impish smile appears on her face, telling me what Edward Janeway sees in this woman. “I have been advised that either of you would be an appropriate recipient of my question.” 

I do raise my eyebrows at her forwardness, but I temper the expression with a smile. I _like_ her forwardness. “Oh you have, have you. By my grandson, I suppose?”

“Indeed,” she repeats, lowering her head minutely, flushing a fetching bronze. “He has also recommended that I employ honesty.” Her head dips lower, and she worries her lower lip – oh yes, Edward, I can see her appeal. Especially when her eyes come up again, a full dose of said honesty in tow. “It is a concept unfamiliar to my people, as you will surely know, but I shall endeavor to follow Edward’s advice.” Her tongue trips a bit on the r, but then I suppose she’s been patient with my accent, too.

She takes a deep breath before going on. “So I will, in honesty and honor, explain what brings me to your house, Commander Marie Janeway.” 

Full name, complete with rank. Holy portents. I lean forwards, all grave attention, and her nostrils flare at my approach. She’s nervous, I suddenly realize. Ready to bolt. And still she’s here, and doing something that is far, far more than just ‘unfamiliar to her people’. “And I will listen, Einleh ir-Kihai t-Viaen, with honor and an open heart.”

Three weeks later, almost a year after the two had met, and one month before we’re scheduled to return to Earth, Edward Janeway and Einleh ir-Kihai t-Viaen marry, and ch’Rihan all but explodes. Not only is Einleh a noblewoman. Oh no. That noblewoman has a child, a child born before the end of her formal tour of military duty, which apparently amounts to a stigma rivaling being born out of wedlock, at least to my forebears. And if that weren’t indecent enough (God, but Mhai is such a sweet little girl, how could people ever… well. I won’t go there. Can’t go biting someone’s head of over slander to my first great-grandchild, can I?), our grandson’s wife pronounces herself to be, from now on, Einleh e-Viaen t-Janeway. 

The House of Janeway, indeed. If the planet didn’t exactly explode, well, quite a few blood vessels certainly did. At least Einleh’s family is, like their daughter, open-minded enough to look upon the union with favorable eyes. 

Leaving our grandson and the two newest House members behind is hard on Kathryn. I had never had her down as such a brooding hen, but she’s downcast all the way back to Earth. She brightens up when I suggest vacationing on ch’Rihan, though. 

“I hadn’t thought you were this intent on returning,” she smiles at me, wrinkles dancing merrily in the corners of her eyes. 

“Oh heavens, she doesn’t know me at all, this wife of mine. And this on the eve of our golden anniversary,” I quip. Her hand flies as nimble as ever, connecting with my arm in a swat that’s friendly more than anything. Eight years away from rounding her first century, and you wouldn’t know it. A long life, sound in mind and body – apparently Q did make that wish come true. _I_ certainly don’t feel like eighty-three. “Ah, Kathryn,” I catch her hand and hold it to my heart with a certain amount of whimsicality, “I would love nothing better than to visit Ki Baratan with you, each year for the next fifty years or so.”

“You would?”

“Well, of course. It would mean another fifty years with you at my side. I’d gladly endure days and days of transwarp if that’s what it takes.”

“Oh, stop it,” she scoffs, but I do get a kiss out of my hamming. 

It’s not quite every year, in the end, but at least every other. And when, shortly after Kathryn’s ninety-eighth birthday, we get the message that Einleh has won a seat on the senate, my wife shoots me a sharp look, to which I respond with several gestures and affirmations of innocence that she visibly doesn’t buy for a second. She sighs at me, I swallow, and then Federation Ambassador (retired) Admiral (retired), Kathryn, Head of the House of Janeway (not retired), just nods at Einleh, in that way she has – quiet, pleased, immensely proud. 

It takes a while to make my wife proud of me that way again.


	11. Anguished (2446)

“Leelee,” I breathe. “Oh, Leelee.”

Her smile is wan, her face almost as white as the sheets. “You knew this was going to happen one day,” she tells me, not even fatalistic. 

“Yeah, but… I guess I’d thought twenty-fifth century medicine was more… advanced than this, you see.”

“Oh hush, Marie. At least this is a quick way to go, and I’ve got something against the pain.” Her eyes indicate the hypo on her bedside table.

“Pain? I thought you were…” _paralyzed._ I can’t bring myself to say it. 

“Those neural fibers don’t give up with a fight, you see,” she says, finding a smile somewhere in that arsenal of her Prussian strength. “It’s how I know what’s going next. It starts to tingle, then it starts to burn, and then it’s gone.” She grimaces. “Everything from the chest down, by now. Seems I’m lucky to breathe autonomously. I would have expected more of twenty-fifth century medicine, too, to tell you the truth, but apparently, there are some things they can’t cure even now.”

“And can’t Althea-?”

“Marie.” Why the hell is she so calm? How can she be? “Do you honestly think we haven’t tried everything?”

I grit my teeth. I ball my fists. I turn around and thump the doorframe, startling the people waiting outside, no doubt. Kathryn, always. Lea, who almost burned out _Voyager’s_ transwarp engines to bring all of us back here in time. Neelix, who came with us when he heard, though I guess he’s sleeping at the moment – he slept such a lot during that nightmare trip. Althea, of course. A bench of elders, the youngest being my daughter at sixty-seven. I huff a bitter laugh and turn back to the oldest of us all, my best friend, my Leelee. 

She needs me. I see her grimace – she’s not quick enough to hide it. I’m at her side as quickly as my feet allow, which is quite rapid yet, considering. 

“Stop mothering me,” she chides, just as she ever did. “Honestly, I would have thought you were over that by now.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever be, sweetheart,” and suddenly I know how I’m going to get through this. No talk of hypos, pain killers, illness. Keep up the banter that’s been our mode of communication for more than eighty years now. 

The spark in her eyes tells me she thinks along the same lines. Threatens my composure, nevertheless. “Pity, eh?” she says lightly.

“What’s that?”

“I never got around to kissing a girl after all.”

I grin, after a little double-take. “And here I thought Archie was the consummate kisser.” He’s been dead these past six years, and for a moment I’m anxious that mentioning him was a mistake, but then she joins my smirk.

“Hell yes.” Her white eyebrows wriggle a little, less than what I’d have expected, more than what I’m hoping for. “Still, sometimes I wonder.” I can’t help it – I _crow_ , and she rolls her eyes at me. “Yeah. I thought you should know, you know, after you pestered me for so long.”

“But, you know… there’s time yet.” My grin turns adventurous, and she groans.

“Marie, you can’t be serious.”

“Why not, Leelee? You can still speak, so your lips aren’t numb yet, are they?”

“You’re married, for one thing?” She rolls her eyes at me again as if that would put paid to my plans.

“You don’t honestly think Kathryn would begrudge this to either of us.” Hell, I _know_ she won’t. There’s no deceit between the two of us – Althea’s gift ensures that. Kathryn will know of that kiss. But she’ll also know the reason, and the cost. It’s something I deign to ignore, the idea of just what that kiss will mean to me, looming on the horizon of my plan. It’s okay, after all – it’s the price you pay, for a… gift like the one I’m planning to give.

“She wouldn’t, would she.” Again, Ellie grimaces, and her breathing hitches for a moment. An alarm goes off, and I can practically see Althea touch Ellie’s mind. That quick, the healer is in the room. That quick, the alarm stops – certainly not because the cause is gone, I know that much from the frown on my best friend’s face. That quick, Althea is outside again.

“Leelee?”

“Right side’s gone,” she tells me, and yes, I can see that, in the suddenly, chokingly unfamiliar motions of her face. “Althea took the pain away, somehow, or rather, she… disengaged it?”

“Handy to have around, isn’t she.” I fight for those words, for their lightness. For the first time, I see fear in Ellie’s eyes. It’s being battled, too, by those Prussian forces, but no force of will has ever been quite enough to fight such fear for long. No, it takes another champion, and that’s where I come in, isn’t it. I sit down on her bed. She’s as much of a waif as she ever was since Archie died, and it’s easy to pick her up and settle her on my lap, supporting a head she can no longer hold up by herself, securing her right side against my chest. The motions come easy to a mother of four and grandmother of eleven. Ellie even chuckles when I tell her, quite seriously, that she’s got no chance of stopping me mothering her anymore. Her left arm comes up to touch my elbow, and I cup her jaw so she can look at me.

Her eyes tell me she’s quite alright with that bit of mothering, right here, right now. Those grey eyes are still the ones I fell for, once upon a double lifetime. The spark of dry irony, of self-deprecation, that little hint of bitter loneliness, that ocean of will she never saw for herself – I kiss her, with that in mind, and she gasps.

“What-?”

“A gift, Leelee.”

She looks at me for a moment and heavens help me, but there are tears in her eyes. She nods, then, and I kiss her again, and feel her lips, still amazingly full in a face of wrinkles, quiver and yield. It’s not a hungry kiss. It’s not lust – how would it be? No, this is love, pure and simple and complex as eight decades can make it. I can see her shy from the wealth of it, and tone it down a little. In my mind’s eye, as it were, I can see her shake her head in denial, and oh, how I know that part of her. Loving someone isn’t the greatest challenge – she did that, three times in her life, once even happily. But _being_ loved… still and after all these years that Archie worshipped her, after all these years I tried to show her, too, in my own way, she can’t bring herself to believe she might be loved, just by virtue of who she is.

 _I do_ , I sing to her. I imagine my love being a light, a hint of sunshine at a cave’s mouth, and feel her be drawn to it. Oh, she knows full well what it is, and that it’s there, and my intrepid, brave, amazing Leelee, an image in her mind of sand running out, walks towards it, hesitant and disbelieving and unstoppable, and sees it grow, and feels its glow.

I know her incredulity, strong enough to choke, as intimately as if it were my own, and try to encourage her, dancing around her slow progress like a joyful dog. It wins me an amused chuckle of hers. _I always wondered how it felt like to be you_ – it’s not a thought I hear, but close enough; hell, I always knew that, didn’t I? My confidence, her lack of self-esteem – we’d always joked about how interesting it would have been to see each other’s mind. I join her laughter, and finally pull her forwards into the sun. For a moment, she dithers on the threshold, then-

 _God almighty._ Her sentiment, or mine? I have no idea. She never was a believer, and neither am I, but this is as close to epiphany as an agnostic can get, I suppose. I’ve always tried to make her believe in herself, in her lovableness, if you will, and now, here, at the end of things, she _sees_. As a wise man once said, seeing isn’t believing; it’s where belief stops, because it isn’t needed anymore. And here, now, she knows, heavens help me, my Leelee _knows_ , and it sings through her self, searing away self-loathing and insecurity and every doubt that was ever planted. _Marie…_ her thought, full of wonder. She knows it, here, now. She finally knows.

 _Leelee_. Mine. Full of love. Full of life, and light, and reassurance, and laughter, and shared memories, and patience, and teasing, and vast, boundless, giddy, love. I keep my thoughts away from sorrow and aching; they will come soon enough. They’re not needed here.

I wrap my love around her until it shines through every bit of her. I can feel her relax into it, body and soul, and somewhere, in a dim part of my mind, I can feel lips bloom in a smile beneath mine. I can feel a tear on my cheek and I swear I don’t care if it’s mine or hers. All I know is that it’s not a grieving tear, but a tear of wonder, at this, here at the end of things. She knows, my Leelee finally knows, and I’ll be forever grateful that she found out. 

It takes the four of them, Neelix, Lea, Althea and Kathryn, to get me to let her body go.


	12. And on (2476)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!Warning!!! 
> 
> I didn't want to put this in the tags because it happens here, at the end of things, but we do have a major character death approaching. Then again, if you've been paying attention to the years in the chapters' titles, that shouldn't come as a surprise, right?

“They came back from the Barrier today,” I tell my wife quietly. I know she likes to know these things, even if she can’t answer any longer. “An important step, they called it, and that they gathered enough information to last several lifetimes. They’re busy as ants over at Sciences, and the _Voyager-B_ – I told you they’d called her that, didn’t I? – anyway, the _Voyager-B_ will set out again when they’re done, in one or two years presumably, to try and breach it this time.” I sigh, and look up at stationary stars, remembering my wife telling me they looked _wrong_ , stilled like that, one night or other. So like her – Kathryn Janeway isn’t stationary. Which is why I don’t think she even hears me right now. 

“I’m certain your spirit is out there with them, my love,” I go on, not heeding the tears. “I’d have followed you to the ends of the universe. I’d follow you through that goddamn Barrier, even, but you – _you_ had to go and… and go where I can’t follow, didn’t you.” My hand clenches around a few lumps of soil, barren now, this late in winter. Crumbles them unconsciously, pats them back into the curve of the little mound. It’ll be a few months before I can plant something, I think, like I’ve thought every winter of the last four years. 

“My Kathryn, I miss you. I miss you. Life’s good, but it’ll never be…” I stop. She knows. We spent ninety-four years of it together, after all. “Elias is doing fine at the Academy, and Leonard will defend his thesis tomorrow. Elsa calls them the next generation of Janeway movers and shakers, but at least she smiles when she says it. I hope that no one but us has heard her. You wouldn’t want words like these to come out as a headline and frighten people – she’ll be running for office again next year, and voters don’t like dynasties, do they. Then again, we’re not the Kennedys – less glamour, but at least we reach higher ages, don’t we. And die of natural causes…” 

My hand brushes a few brittle leaves off the headstone. It’s just a marker, really, nothing more – Rear Admiral Kathryn Janeway didn’t get interred. Good grief, no. I let Starfleet put her ashes in the probe they sent through that new-found wormhole. It did seem fitting; no one knew at that time, after all, where that wormhole would go, and my Kathryn would have been the first to want to explore. I remember how I fought with Admiral Lindemann over what kind of ceremony would be appropriate. Oh, they wanted every last bit of pomp and circumstance they could possibly milk from famous Admiral Janeway’s death, but I insisted on something plainer. Certainly, Kathryn had never shied from limelight, but she’d always used it for promoting her ideals, and so had I, speaking to the people gathered in _Voyager’s_ mess hall (the third ship of the name, and still the most beautiful class of ships to me), and, through subspace, to everyone who’d tuned in, I suppose.

Not that I’d cared much at the time.

Traces, I’d told them. You live life, you leave traces. And if other people choose to follow those traces, let them do so because they decide it’s the right thing for them to do, not out of loyalty, nor out of indifference. Kathryn Janeway had rejoiced, I’d told them, about everyone and anyone who had chosen to leave well-trodden paths and track his own traces onto the planes of life. If anything is her legacy, let it be this – find your own way, either following other people for a good reason or on your own, but always, always, be true to yourself. Never sell out. Never lose your goal. Make possible the impossible; better yet, forget that last word altogether.

I had not reminisced. I had not told them what I had lost, what I would miss, all those things usually said at such occasions. How could they understand, when I hadn’t fully grasped it myself?

That irritating little whistle had sounded, and people had snapped to attention like a well-oiled machine. It had made me laugh. I hadn’t drawn up quite as much. My wife had been my commanding officer for long, long years, but the woman I’ve lost had been my Kathryn, not a rank to salute to. I’d turned towards the window instead, raising my hand to touch it, laughing with the memory of her teasing. 

The wormhole had bloomed to accept the probe and the little urn riding in it, and Starfleet had, for a while, forwarded its telemetry to me. Not that I’d cared much.

I would have thought the pain would have dulled after four years, but in some ways, on some days, it’s as fresh as was in that instant I’d kissed her and sensed… _nothing_ ; that moment I’d known she had left me behind, had left everything behind. I’d howled. Oh how I’d howled. The skies had trembled at my grief; Vulcans would have stared at me in awe; no Klingon Death Yell had ever been so fierce. My Kathryn, gone. My vibrant, loving, fierce and gentle wife, undisputed matriarch of the House of Janeway, formidable commenter on Starfleet and Federation policy, gone? It still happens to this day that I turn around to tell her something, only to find that she…

“Oma?” A voice cuts through my tears, and I try to pull myself together and find a smile for this great-granddaughter of mine. 

“Hey, Mimi.” I beckon her to sit next to me on the thermal blanket, then lean against her when she does. She’s good to lean against, Mimi is. Somewhat more than chubby, but then again, so I had been, a long time ago. Am again, right? And she’s just as strong as I was, too – oh, we share a lot of things, Marie Elizabeth Janeway and I. “Sent to bring me home?”

“M-hm. Mom says you’ll catch your cold out here, but this blanket is quite good, isn’t it.”

“You should know, sweetheart, it was you who thought of giving it to me.” I smile and, quite without seeing, I know she does, too. “Everyone else just nagged at me to stop coming here, to let her go, et cetera ad infinitum. Ad nauseam, to tell the truth.” I wave my hand about. “I _have_ let her got, haven’t I? I know she’s dead, and I’m going on.” We share a little chuckle, Mimi and I – it’s the only word on Kathryn’s headstone, after all, apart from a name and two dates – ‘ON’. Hard to see, really, how it could have been anything else. _On, Janeway._ Makes me tear up again to know that, all the time, we’ve both been telling ourselves the same thing in our minds, never realizing, because never said out loud. It had been Althea who’d told us one day, laughing while she did so, such a long, long time ago.

“I know,” Mimi says gently, squeezing my shoulder and pulling me back to the present. So much understanding – and she’s found it in the same places I have. I know, because I’ve led her to most of them, haven’t I. “You know, it scared me pretty bad when I saw how you grieved.” God, she’d been fourteen at the time, hadn’t she? “I thought you were going mad, and I wondered how anyone would…” she shrugs, at a loss for words.

“Would allow themselves to become so deeply attached to someone?” I see her nod from the corners of my eyes. “Oh, sweetheart. You know, I could wax eloquent about spending more than three quarters of your life with someone, but the truth is that getting used to someone is an effect, not a cause.” I look up at the stars again; Orion – I remember a small balcony, and white puffs of breath like now, and a slender body whom I hadn’t dared embrace. Seems like everything I see or think wakes some memory or other. Bane of old age, eh? “I’ll tell you a secret, though,” I smile without turning round to her, secure in the knowledge that she’ll hear it in my words. “Maybe you’ve already been there, or maybe you will get there, Mimi – comes a day when you fall in love with someone, and, hopefully, comes a day when you decide to give yourself completely to that someone. And comes a day when life presents the bill for that. I knew full well that either Kathryn or me would stay behind and pay up – we both knew that. You can’t know that all things must die and not know it.” 

I turn around now, to see in her eyes whether she understands, and find to my delight that she does. “People say it takes courage to die,” I go on, “but the way I see it, dying is easy. There’s something much more terrifying than dying. It takes ultimate courage. It’s the cause of effects like being familiar with someone, or feeling at home.” My hand falls to the headstone again. Touchy-feely, Tom had used to call Kathryn, and later me, too. Tom Paris, dead, too, this past decade. B’Elanna had died even before that, but then, Klingons don’t live that long, do they? Not even half-Klingons, apparently. They hadn’t seen the launch of the _Voyager-B_ , but they’d been part of it, nevertheless – Starfleet’s most lauded starship designer/engineer team had set at least a third of the groundwork that newest class of ships had been built on.

“What is, Oma?”

“Hm?” I pull my thoughts back to the here and now again.

“The ultimate courage,” Mimi sings teasingly and I threaten her with a finger. She just grins, and that’s as should be – you _should_ tease fossils when they no longer remember to stay in the present. Better than patronizing them, in any case, not that anyone would dare. I learned that glare from the best, after all.

Mimi does look at me in a strange way when I start to sing, though. “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn-” good God, is this really my voice? “-is just to love, and be loved in return.” A tear spills on my cheek, but I don’t care. Wisdom comes at a price, doesn’t it? “I always found the former easier than the latter,” I continue. “A lot of people do. But, Mimi, being loved – nothing beats that. It isn’t easy, and some people never manage, because they lack that courage, but if you find it, sweetheart – hold on to it, and never let it go.”

“Even if it hurts?” She looks at me almost timidly – granted, I am crying freely by now, heart still cut and bleeding after four years, eight months, ten days. I do lose track of the hours. 

“How can you be truly happy without risking being equally truly hurt?” I ask back, and nod when she does. “Don’t be afraid of it. Life isn’t all sweet corn and popsicles, but without opening your heart to pain, it won’t be open to joy, either. And this,” my hand paints a vague circle, “is a price I gladly pay, although,” I sniff, “I confess it’s getting old on me.”

She smiles. “You’re something, Oma.”

“My Kathryn used to say the same,” I laugh, “either that, or that I was impossible, against all scientific evidence.” A thought occurs to me. Why not? Who, if not she? When, if not now? “Sweetheart, I want you to do me a favor – no, no, not right now,” I touch her sleeve as she makes to get up. “You’ll know when. There’s a folder of files in my work station. You’ll find it, I’m certain. It’s encrypted, but the access codes are right here,” I lift my hands and let starlight fall onto the two rings – before people had taken her away, I’d slipped Kathryn’s ring on the smallest finger of my left. For safekeeping, as before. “You’ll figure it out.”

“What is it?” 

“Oh, you’ll see. Do with it what you will. It’s a gift, because you asked so nicely.”

“I did?”

I grin at her. “You did. Now do me another favor and run along and tell your mom that I’ll be a minute.” I pat the night-black soil. “I’ll just say goodbye, like every night.”

“I know.” She scrambles to her feet and takes a few steps. Then she stops and turns around to look down at me. “I love you, Oma.” The look she gives me is older than it should be, and I nod, faintly, proudly.

“I love you too, Marie.”

~~~

Someone else sits down next to me when she’s gone, cause for another grin. “And here I always thought the Grim Reaper was a black-robed skeleton.”

“Go figure,” Althea nods. “How long have you known I’d been there?”

“Oh, a while,” I toss off. “You heard me telling Mimi about the story?”

“I did. I knew what you were on about then, so I stayed.”

“Thanks.”

Althea looks the same as the day I’ve met her, but then, she never was exactly human, appearances notwithstanding. Her eyes, though, seem as achingly left behind as I feel, but then, Deanna’s gone, too. I can’t bear them for long. I couldn’t when Kathryn still lived, and I sure as hell can’t these days. So I turn, looking out over the cove and the sea instead, some twenty meters below us. Doesn’t seem like years ago that Kathryn and I sat here and watched infinity, or as close as you can get on a planet. Saw the Earth’s curve on the horizon, saw spectacular sunsets, saw stars shoot across the Milky Way, saw small fires on the beach sometimes and always, always, the lighthouse’s beam showing people home. Tonight, blackness merges into blackness, one covered in diamonds, the other in reflected shards. 

“The stars are beautiful tonight. Beckoning.”

“No moon,” I agree. “Only thing missing would be a flock of geese veeing north. Those cries always made me long to up and leave.” Not that geese fly at night, but still.

“You were a bit more sedentary than your wife,” Althea says with a little smile. 

“How do you bear it, Althea?” She’s eons old. She must have people, loved ones, die on her a lot more often than I have. She must have found a way, surely?

“I haven’t,” she replies to my thought rather than my question. “Twice,” she goes on. “I loved Love Herself, Marie, and lost her, and I thought I’d die of grief. I didn’t. Nice lesson in there somewhere.” She shrugs, then her eyes turn wistful. “And then I met Deanna, and loved again.”

“And lost her.” More than a decade ago, and it had devastated her just as Kathryn’s death had devastated me. Took her in a different direction, non-corporeal that she is. I guess I’m lucky that she’s here at all – in a manner of speaking. There’s certainly no physical body next to me.

Still, I can see her as clearly as I can hear her sigh. “You said yourself that that’s the price.”

“Comes a day when I don’t want to pay any longer,” I say, my voice as deliberate as my thoughts.

“Yes.” Her smile is companionable. “Are you ready?”

I kneel and touch the headstone once more. Oh, I daresay people will smile when they find out what I want put on mine, right next to this one, black granite nicely balancing Kathryn’s brilliant white marble. Next to her, and facing the sea, ever since times unfathomable symbol for the start into the unknown. Of course I’ve planned it. We did together, Kathryn and I, someday in our nineties, almost laughing over our choices. Almost. 

Then I think about her who just left – Mimi, eighteen and not by far the last member of our clan. Oh, the House of Janeway has become a sprawling thing, new shoots sprouting like weeds all the time – of our four daughters, fifteen grandchildren and four step-grandchildren had sprung, and of those, so far, almost forty great-grandchildren. The HMS Janeway had groaned and bulged each Christmas. 

They will miss me, and I will miss them, but, heavens help me, I miss my Kathryn far, far more. And although I’ve always been curious what this tangle of a family might come up with next and what tomorrow might hold, that curiosity is dwarfed, erased, undone, by the knowledge that tomorrow wouldn’t hold _her_ , ever again.

“Do you know what awaits?” I ask Althea.

“Not a clue.” 

The unknown, then. A last setting out, a last bit of courage. A last leap of faith. My sails have been set for a while yet; my things ordered. My goodbyes haven’t all been said, but then again, how would they ever be? I never said goodbye to my wife either, and that would have been the most important one of all. Althea is right – I have entrusted the story into the hands best suited, and that has been the last rope cast off. ‘Throw off the bowlines’, Twain has said, hadn’t he. ‘Explore. Dream. Discover.’ And at his words, at this image, a song comes back to me, a haunting piece, more than five hundred years old, soaring achingly into the endless, empty black above. One song of so, so many. Oh, my Kathryn. My love. What a song we’ve made. On, to the next verse now? 

Yes.

I stand, and years seem to drop off my shoulders as I straighten them. My restored eye-sight has certainly never deserted me, but still a shadow leaves my vision as I look out to sea, seeing a beloved face in the sky, a face I’ve always seen there, a face of laughing stars, a face I’ve missed for far too long. And, no matter how my starship captain would tease me for it, when one of those stars falls, I wish on it, the most heartfelt wish of all my life. Safe to say that now, right? ‘All my life’?

“Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song mentioned at the end is Bilbo's Last Song, as can be heard [here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bYTLAXOC1Y). To me, although it is sung by a boy, it aptly conveys the tiredness of age, the weariness of one left behind who sets forth to join with those who have gone before. 
> 
> And part of my mind has obviously stayed with Robin Hobb of the former chapter, because in her books, 'yes' is the ultimate prayer, and I wholeheartedly agree.


	13. Encore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because some things never ever end... 
> 
> No, I tell a lie. This _is_ the end of Kathryn's and Marie's story, my friends. I do have a few snippets around and might upload them someday, but - this is it. 
> 
> Thanks for sharing the journey with me!

The door hisses open, and I hear singing. I groan and it stops – well, thank you. Doesn’t matter that my roommate’s voice is smooth, nor even that she hits the notes quite nicely. Doesn’t even matter that after three weeks she has yet to repeat herself – today is _not_ a good day to hear singing.

“Didn’t see you there, honey, I’m sorry,” and that’s another thing that sets my teeth on edge; I’m not ‘honey’ to anyone, not that it stops her. “Wait a mo, I’ll make it up to you.”

Her steps recede, and I blow out a breath. Sleep’s over now, that’s for sure. She’s too… too much to ignore. Too much of everything. Then the smell of coffee hits my nose and I think that, maybe, she isn’t so bad after all.

“There you go,” she says when I surface, pressing the mug into my hand. “Don’t tell me you were out partying. I’d die of the shock of it.”

“Quantum chemistry,” I manage, “had to turn in a paper. Up all night.” My head snaps up in shock, then I remember I did indeed send it. My hand lifts the coffee to my lips without much thought, and for the next few minutes, I’m, against all scientific knowledge, in a galaxy that contains nothing but me and small swallows of black ambrosia. 

“I never saw a cup of coffee make such a difference.” It almost doesn’t sound like her voice, it’s so awed. It doesn’t get my eyes to open, but it does bring me back to the known universe, even wins her a small smile – I know by now she _loathes_ the stuff; maybe this will bring her round. 

Her breathing stops. 

My eyes fly open to see if she’s alright, and when they meet hers, it’s like an electric shock. We both flinch. I’m quicker to shake it off, though. “What the-” Her PADD beeps. She rolls the eyes of the long-suffering, and I do the same at her hamming. 

“Next course starts in five minutes,” she grates, standing from where she’d been crouched in front of me. “Don’t go away, we need to talk about this.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Three weeks, and already getting old. She’s in command track, I’m in sciences, and for all that we’re both first years, she’s bossy to top all bossiness. It’s my little getback, and wins all sorts of reactions, a fact I deeply cherish. “Will stick to this bed, ma’am.”

“Damnit, you’re really too much sometimes,” I can hear as she grabs three PADDs seemingly at random, then leaves at a run.

I go through my inbox while she’s away, through my notes, through my homework. Have yet to see her do any of this, really. I’m buggered if I see how she’s going to manage – then again, I might have another, quieter roommate if she’s flushed out, so maybe… no. I’m nicer than that. 

Then I straighten the room, or rather, my half of it, throwing dark looks at her mess all the while. Minerva Aching… spreads. Two days after she moved in, I knew all her stuff because I’d handled it at least once, to return it to her half of our room. I wonder how she finds the time to mess up the place like she does; she’s certainly out far more often, and far longer, than I am. I shake my head. I knew sharing a space with someone was a lottery, but really, I’d hoped to be luckier than this. At least her absences give me the privacy to study, up to and including all-nighters to hand in chemistry papers. She never came home last night, I know that much – the birds had been singing when I’d finally gone to bed, and she’d never even touched hers until she came in singing ten minutes ago.

I look at that cup of coffee. Difference, alright. I wouldn’t have thought she had it in her to be so… solicitous. Then again, three weeks are hardly enough time to get to know someone, shared bedroom or no. I guess I should be glad that it’s only two of us, not four like in olden days. I sure know I’m glad we have our own bathroom and – oh, the luxury – our own replicator. ‘You want the best, treat them like the best’ – thank you, Admiral Janeway, for changing recruiting policies after the Dominion War. Oh, I know my Starfleet History, even if that course isn’t until next semester. I even read that book about her, mostly because I'll read anything, but also because it had been, well, a good read, right.

No tasks left, no courses until the afternoon – I lie back down on my bed, arms crossed behind my head. Even if I know I won’t sleep, my body can use the rest after last weekend’s half-marathon. Damn, how she’d teased me for coming fourth. She knows exactly which buttons to push, too. Maybe Minerva Aching will make a good captain one day, with her grasp of human nature – I snort – but she sure makes one pest of a roommate right now.

“Now, what the hell happened back then?” she shoots when she storms back in.

“Don’t tell me you spent your whole Exopsychology lesson thinking about this?”

“Course I did,” she shrugs. “Was raised by two counselors, wasn’t I? I could give Onsen lessons if he listened to me.” She sits down on her bed, eyes glued to my face, and I suppose it’s common courtesy to sit up myself, to talk to her. “What. Happened?”

“Hell, I don’t know – _you_ stopped breathing.”

“You didn’t notice anything else?”

As if I’d tell her. “No – why?”

“Honey, the _universe_ moved, didn’t you feel it?”

I roll my eyes. However intent she looks, this is too much. By far. “Because I drank coffee.”

“No, because- oh, what the hell.” And before I know it, she’s crossed over, knelt down in front of me, taken my jaw and…

The universe moves. I know her, in that kiss. I have no idea how or why, but I _know_ her – that tremendous cockiness, the solicitousness underneath, her insatiable curiosity that matches my own, her approach that is so vastly different from mine. And I know that her lips are nothing like anything I ever kissed – well, go figure. Never kissed a girl, did I. They’re soft, and relentless, and completely at ease, and trembling, and they taste of… more. I can barely suppress a growl when she pulls back, and her one-sided smirk tells me she knows it. “What the hell was that?” I ask, completely not liking how out of breath I sound.

“See what I mean?”

“How could I, you’ve barely talked about what you mean.” A scientist’s answer, and someone raised by counselors – and I know I should commiserate, but there are more important things at the moment – should understand exactly what I’m talking about. 

“Honey, I _swear_ I never laid eyes on you before I moved in here, and I _know_ you, far better than three weeks warrant.”

“Will you knock off the ‘honey’, for heaven’s sake?” I run a hand through my hair. My fingers, for some reason, itch to touch – well, her hair, to be honest, her incredible, enviable blond, long, shining… but I’m not going there. What’s with me, anyway? “This is… serious.”

“Too right,” she fires back. “When you drank from that coffee of yours, it was the weirdest déjà-vu I ever had. And then, just now, when we…” she grimaces, eyes towards the ceiling. “The same, all over again, only more so.”

“Maybe we should go down to the emergency room,” I suggest, and she raises an eyebrow.

“And have our heads checked? For what, honey? Hallucinations?”

“Well, I _know_ I’m on too little sleep, and you haven’t been home all night, so you’re probably still dr…” my words peter out at the look on her face. 

“You have no idea where I’ve been or what I’ve done there,” she says, not even threateningly, but oh so very chilly. “I certainly did not abuse any substances,” she practically spits both words. “But seriously, hon- _Lyssa_.” Her voice is sober now, and she’s even remembered about the ‘honey’, finally. “What would we tell them? That we kissed and it felt strange? I can already see them strap us to the beds and run all manner of tests, can’t you?”

“A counselor, then?” I take a look at her face and relent. “Right. Sorry. Forget I suggested it.”

Her nod is as magnanimous as her glare had been lethal. “Forgotten already.” 

“Still, this begs the question-”

“-when do we do it again?” Which is not exactly the sort of question I had in mind.

“I _was_ going to suggest we try and find out what’s going on,” I say sweetly.

“By doing it again.” Sweet spirits help me. That daredevil grin will be the death of her, one day. “Hey, you’re the scientist, honey,” she goes on. “Set up a row of tests, I’ll change into something… nicer, while you do it.”

“Will you, for once, take something seriously, Minerva?”

“Oh, but I do,” she whispers, and before I know it, her lips are on me again, and her presence, for want of a better word, is in my mind, exhilarated, intrigued, hungry, _familiar_ beyond belief. Damn sexy, too. 

“Elizabeth Livia Braxton-” how the hell does she know my middle name? I certainly never told her, “-I know you. I know I love you, what’s more, even if I have no idea how or why.”

“You what?” Maybe she should get her head checked. “Is this some form of mindgame? Telepathy? Empathy?”

“Nope,” she says with a shrug, “fully human, ESP rating of about… um… zero.” Then she looks at me, head tilted. “You?”

“No!”

“Well then. There you have it,” she says, as if that would explain anything. “Reincarnation,” she elaborates, and I snort.

“Yeah, right. The Queen of Sheba and her consort.”

“Spock and Kirk, maybe,” she muses, quite seriously, then holds up a hand to stop me. “No, think about it. Command track, sciences track – check. Same sex – check. Life-long friendship – well, we can work on that, can’t we.”

I shake my head at her. “You’re impossible.” And for some reason, those words echo, as if I’ve said them a million times before.

“There it was again,” she whispers, pupils almost blacking out the cornflower blue of her eyes. And why does that color feel wrong for a moment? I mean, I have the same coloring, right, and three people have already asked me to take a message to my ‘sister’, haven’t they, assuming that we share a dorm because we’re… Good grief, what will they think of when we- “Lyssa…” it’s a hiss, a soft sibilant whisper, and it sets hooks into a point somewhere behind my navel and pulls me towards her inexorably. 

Our third kiss drowns me, and any thought of scientific research. I’m late for Plasma Physics, my mortification about that almost canceling out the hormonal residue. 

I help her pass Stellar Cartography and I realize she’s a whizz kid, if incredibly lazy. She helps me, in turn, with Interspecies Ethics; the intricacies of Vulcan, or Bolian, or Human behavior as familiar to her as the streets leading to the back entrances of operas and theaters. I learn more about the emotional impact of music than I ever thought possible, watching her listen to Dvorak, hearing her sing Jazz standards to me. She learns to keep her things tidy. We both fight our anxiety about having a relationship, but this is twenty-sixth century Starfleet, after all. 

I get to meet her non-Starfleet friends (which is to say: all of them); she meets my family – Starfleet royalty, from my father’s side, much as I hate it. She very politely declines every leg up my aunts and uncles offer over the course of our last three years, and I learn that she is fiercely proud and straight as an arrow. I graduate with better marks than she does, but she just shrugs and cites Admirals Kirk and Riker, and presses for advanced tactical training and her second pip, and holds out a ring while I work on my doctorate, a ring I don’t notice until she starts laughing so hard she almost drops it. 

Our daughter is born during her first deep space mission, but Lieutenant junior grade Minerva Aching is there, three days before the due date and right on time to help me breathe through the contractions. She tells me she’s on maternity leave for the next three months and I cry when I kiss her. Two and a half years later, a full lieutenant announces she will stay at HQ for a while so that Lieutenant junior grade Lyssa Aching can leave for a tour with the _Janeway_ , finest scientific vessel of its day, and I hug her and cry again and almost don’t come back from behind the Barrier, and we vow never to accept separate postings again.

Captain Minerva Aching of the _USS Athena_ (oh, we had a field day when she’d received that posting) is Starfleet’s shooting star during the Zahl-Krenim crisis. The Aching Maneuver, though, the one that saved two Starfleet and thirteen Krenim ships on that mission, is, contrary to what many people believe, mine, not hers – she never understood the possibilities of subspace phasing as well as I did. But one wife, no matter how determined, can’t set any and all rumors to rights. Still, she finds time to have our second daughter, a true space baby, what with both her mothers serving on the same ship. Oh, we get likened to Kirk and Spock indeed, and to Janeway and Vey, Picard and Crusher, and all the other legends. It’s our friends and colleagues who do it, though, so we bear it stoically and retaliate whenever appropriate. 

We don’t make as many first contacts as Janeway did, nor save the galaxy as often as the _Enterprises_ , but Captain and Commander Aching make their impact, too, I’d say. _Aching Athena_ becomes a catchphrase, and almost the name of our third child – good thing we manage to stop Doctor Paris filling out the form in time, silly man. Afterwards, he claims that a glare should be declared a weapon subject to registration, and tries to modify Velocity disks to react to a forceful stare rather than to a phaser beam. He relents a good decade later, when his son and our eldest marry, and reports, another five years down the road, that even if not a weapon, the Aching Glare is certainly a dominant trait. 

The feeling of familiarity never leaves us, although, of course, it changes over time. I’ll never forget the first time it happened, though, and to this day I can’t shake the feeling that something happened that day Mimi first kissed me. Certainly nobody ever managed to explain the latent empathy between the two of us (at least that’s what I call it. My loving wife rarely bothers to call it anything, she’s so intent on, ahem, _exploring_ it). Still, a bit of mystery never hurt, says she who can’t leave a secret alone, to me who holds two doctorates and the SFA chair for Advanced Subspace Geometry. 

Spirits, but I love her.


End file.
